Douch’s mother furious at pay delay for lawyer

The distraught mother of Gary Douch, brutally killed in a preventable tragedy in Mountjoy Prison, has slammed the Department of Justice for failing to pay the barrister who conducted the inquiry into her son’s death for almost four years.

Margaret Rafter also strongly criticised prison governors for how they dealt with both her son and his killer Stephen Egan and the “squalor” of Mountjoy Prison at the time. She also criticised the decision of psychiatrists to discharge her son from their care back into the prison system.

Douch, aged 21, died at the hands of Egan, a diagnosed psychotic with a history of extreme violence, in a packed makeshift cell in the basement of Mountjoy on August 1, 2006.