Prison Service staff face leak probe

CIVIL servants at Prison Service headquarters are being questioned by a retired senior garda regarding the leaking of a sensitive internal report on Mountjoy Prison to the Irish Examiner.

The former detective has been appointed by Irish Prison Service (IPS) director general Brian Purcell to interview staff at IPS headquarters in Longford to determine how the audit got into the public domain and who was responsible.

The audit, which was carried out in June 2007, said the jail was like a “pressure cooker” because of the rise in prisoner numbers, which then stood at 540.