Call to close youth prison

THE chairman of Limerick’s joint policing committee yesterday called for a high-security youth facility, from which three inmates escaped at the weekend, to be closed.

Councillor Kevin Kiely said Coovagh House was a waste of taxpayers’ money as those being held there were not in secure detention.

He was speaking after a 15-year-old boy held a care worker at knife-point and escaped from the facility. Earlier, two girls escaped after viciously attacking a woman care worker.