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.

Seven drones have been recovered from Irish prisons in the last two years.

A father-of-three has been jailed for five years for the sexual abuse of a 12-year-old boy over 25 years ago after he made the child believe that he wanted a relationship with him.

A murderer found with an improvised knife under his prison cell mattress has failed in a High Court challenge to his jail disciplinary hearing.

A young man who absconded from an open prison and lived "in plain sight" for more than four years before re-arrest has won Supreme Court declarations that his re-arrest and subsequent detention to serve out the rest of his 16-month sentence were unlawful.

Prison and Garda authorities are investigating a security incident at the weekend when a replica firearm was discovered in the grounds of a Dublin jail.

Patrick Hutch, who is accused of the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel more than two years ago, has launched High Court proceedings over his transfer from one prison facility to another.

Multi-billion euro fraudster David Drumm is working as a cleaner in the basement of Mountjoy Prison, the Irish Examiner understands.

Multi-billion euro fraudster David Drumm is working as a cleaner in the basement of Mountjoy Prison, the Irish Examiner understands.

The main suspect in the murder of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe was arrested last night.

A murder charge has been brought against a 26-year-old man arising out of the investigation into the death of a young mother in Cork City last April.

More than 3,500 makeshift daggers and other deadly weapons were seized by prison officers working in jails during the past five years — an average of two every day.

A Dublin youth will go on trial in May accused of repeatedly punching and kicking a prison officer in the head.

Scissor sister, Charlotte Mulhall, 32, and killer waitress, Marta Herda, 29, are just two of 10 women serving life sentences in Ireland.

Record number of complaints show complexities of children’s lives.

The manager of Oberstown Children Detention Campus has said riot gear for staff is not the answer to issues at the facility as workers veer towards possible industrial action.

An inmate who made a suicide attempt, which was deemed “not serious” by prison staff, was found dead just over an hour later after he took his own life.

A "notorious" murderer will not spend any extra time in prison for threatening to rip the head off a prison officer due to a legal anomaly.

Gardaí are keeping a close eye on suspects travelling in and out of Dublin Airport in the run-up to tomorrow’s funeral of Edward Hutch Sr.

Prison bosses are considering the roll-out of weapons amnesties following the success of an amnesty in Dublin’s Wheatfield Prison.

Bumper sales of cut-price Tayto Cheese & Onion crisps, bottles of Coca Cola, Jelly Tots, and cigarettes helped profits at the prison service’s network of tuck shops jump to €700,000 last year.

Former TD and minister Ivor Callely will not have to return to prison following the State’s decision to allow him enhanced remission on the prison sentence he received for fraudulently claiming Oireachtas expenses on forged mobile phone invoices.

The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision that the detention of convicted murderer Daniel McDonnell in solitary confinement for a year breaches his rights to bodily and psychological integrity.

There was something unseemly about the fact that Eamonn Lillis walked away from Wheatfield Prison last April €1.3m richer after serving five years of a seven-year sentence for killing his wife, Celine Cawley, at their home in Howth, north Dublin, in December 2008.

The ringleader of a “spine-chilling” attack — in which a student was “frog-marched” to an ATM and told to withdraw money or his girlfriend would be raped by two accomplices — has had his jail term reduced on appeal.

Former senator Ivor Callely has won a High Court action challenging a decision to refuse him early release from a five-month prison sentence imposed over fraudulently claiming Oireachtas expenses.

The ringleader behind a “spine chilling” attack in which a student was “frog marched” to an ATM machine and told to withdraw money or his girlfriend would be raped by two accomplices, has had his jail term reduced on appeal.

Two prison staff are due to undergo tests after an inmate squirted them with his blood when they foiled a drug swap during a hospital visit.

A female prison officer was recovering from shock yesterday after a pipebomb attack on her car at the weekend — the second such incident in a fortnight.

Two prison officers received injuries yesterday after an inmate launched an unprovoked attack in Mountjoy Prison.

A jailed murderer punched a female nurse in the face as she went to give him medication in his cell yesterday.

Legal experts are set to make recommendations on whether or not killers such as Eamonn Lillis should be barred from inheriting assets, such as the family home, from their victims.

THE bumbling Mr Bumble in Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist declared the law to be an ‘ass’. He wasn’t, of course, reflecting on Ireland’s inheritance laws but the comment is prescient in light of the fact that wife-killer Eamonn Lillis emerges from prison today a wealthy man.

The anti-water charges movement has ‘jumped the shark’ in the sincerity of its protests, writes Alison O’ Connor.

Water charge protesters stormed a meeting of Cork City Council last night in solidarity with jailed campaigners in Dublin.

The man serving a life sentence for murdering teenager Melanie McCarthy McNamara has brought a High Court challenge against the 23-hour per day lock up regime he is subjected to at Wheatfield Prison.

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Drugs are suspected to have played a part in the deaths of two inmates in Limerick and Wheatfield prisons.

A prison governor says conjugal visits should be considered for inmates in Irish jails.

Former politician Ivor Callely is to be allowed travel to Scotland after the High Court yesterday varied the terms of his bail.

Jailed former senator Ivor Callely has been granted bail at the High Court, pending the outcome of his challenge to the refusal of the minister for justice to grant him temporary release from prison.