State failed to protect prisoner, High Court rules

A High Court judge has ruled that the State has failed in its constitutional obligations to protect a prisoner who was put in a padded cell in Mountjoy Prison for 11 days because there was no other safe place to put him.

However Mr Justice Gerard Hogan said that "at present" he was declining to make a finding that the breach of Wayne Kinsella's rights was so serious that his detention was unlawful because the prison authorities had placed him in the cell for his own protection.