Bed crisis sends mentally ill inmates to jail

MENTALLY-ILL inmates are being committed to prison because of a lack of beds in the State's only secure psychiatric hospital, a prison visiting committee has warned.

It is a matter of grave concern that inmates who should be in the Central Mental Hospital are being held in Roscommon's Castlerea prison, the committee said.

There are also "very unsatisfactory" difficulties in securing transfers from the mainly remand centre, Cloverhill, to the hospital in Dundrum.