The country’s most overcrowded prisons have seen a dramatic turnaround in capacity after 200 inmates were released early as part of emergency measures to ease overcrowding and prevent a Covid-19 outbreak.

The prisoner apologised unreservedly, and later complained that it was a disgrace and a joke for him to get a five-month jail sentence for the assault.

A woman caught with €800 worth of cannabis in her car told gardaí the drugs were for transmission to Cork Prison.

The amount of drugs, weapons and other contraband detected in prisons continued to rise last year despite a range of enhanced measures implemented by authorities to stop smuggling.

A judge has ordered a man facing criminal charges to be admitted into a psychiatric unit and to be placed on a waiting list for treatment at the Central Mental Hospital after his solicitor admitted he had struggled to get him the treatment he needs while in custody.

A Polish man was remanded in custody until yesterday arising out of an alleged disturbance at Cork Airport on Saturday.

The Irish Prison Service has been urged to keep its nursing committal forms under constant review after an inquest returned a verdict of suicide in the case of a man who took his own life less than four hours after being committed to Cork Prison.

The scale of an event, the sweep of a narrative can make it difficult to comprehend and, therefore, difficult to resolve.

A judge has said he will have little option but to release a man likely to be found not guilty by reason of insanity unless state services can provide the acute in-patient mental health care he needs.

The solicitor for Tansanqa Radise told a judge that his client could not get a bed at the HSE's Carraig Mór centre in Cork because he had an address in Dublin.

The Small Things by Enda Walsh gets a big production at Cork's Old Waterworks, writes Ellie O'Byrne.

An inmate at Cork Prison was caught twice in three weeks with a mobile phone in his cell.

A prisoner serving a jail term for raping a young woman in a public park was today given a further four months’ imprisonment for attacking a prison officer.

It is now “crystal clear” to prison staff and managers that the failure to monitor vulnerable inmates will result in dismissal, the head of the Irish Prison Service has said.

Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan has expressed “grave concern” at the handling of deaths in prisons, according to internal prison service correspondence seen by the Irish Examiner.

Does David Blackwell’s death point to a bigger issue around deaths in Irish prisons, asks Special Correspondent Michael Clifford

Gardai are investigating claims that a prisoner was sexually assaulted by other inmates in Cork Prison.

37-year-old Jonathan Heaphy applied for temporary release from Cork Prison to facilitate his radiation and chemotherapy after surgery in 2017.

Prison staff have been disciplined after CCTV disproved records that an inmate in Cork Prison was checked every 15 minutes in the hours before he was found dead in his cell.

A Valentine's night out went "very wrong" after a woman was arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and her partner ended up daubing his faeces on a cell wall after he was arrested for public order offences.

Prison officers made more than 1,100 drug seizures in Irish prisons last year as part of ongoing efforts to clamp down on contraband.