Prisoner fails in challenge over prison's refusal to relase information

A prisoner has failed in a High Court challenge over the alleged use by prison authorities of data protection to unlawfully refuse to tell his lawyer why his client had been held in a padded cell for five days.

Ms Justice Niamh Hyland did not accept Brandon Crosbie's constitutional right to information in order to access justice had been affected by a refusal of Mountjoy Prison to give out information over the phone to his solicitor Tony Collier.

Mr Crosbie had been put in the padded cell between December 18 and 23, 2018, after he seriously assaulted another inmate, the judge said.

Mr Collier was not informed of this however and claimed he was refused information as to why Mr Crosbie was in a padded cell due to the general data protection regulation (GDPR) concerns.

Mr Crosbie's mother had informed Mr Collier about her son being placed in the padded cell on December 18.

Mr Collier complained to the prison authorities that the reliance on GDPR was erroneous.

He brought a High Court application seeking a declaration that GDPR did not prevent the prison governor from informing the solicitor of the reasons for the lock up.

He argued the unlawful refusal to provide this information had the potential to interfere with his client's constitutional right of access to justice.

The prison governor argued Mr Crosbie had no standing to bring the challenge because his solicitor had no specific instructions to do so. The proceedings were pointless (moot) because by the time Mr Collier got leave from the court to bring them, on December 24, he had been informed of the reason for him being put in the padded cell.

Ms Justice Hyland ruled the application was moot and Mr Crosbie lacked standing to seek the declarations sought.

She said it had been argued Mr Crosbie would not necessarily be in a position to understand whether his rights had been infringed without his lawyer being informed.

Given the "limited nature of the information sought", the judge did not accept Mr Crosbie would not have been able to interpret it to vindicate his constitutional rights.

She said Mr Collier himself could have obtained the information simply by producing a signed authorisation from his client through various avenues open to him. These included arranging a prison visit and providing evidence, such as a copy of his driving licence or passport, to establish to the prison authorities who he was.

She did not consider the refusal of the prison staff to give out the information over the phone adversely affected his client's rights.

The judge said in the absence of detailed submissions on the matter, it would be unwise to give any view on the applicability of GDPR and of an EU directive on law enforcement in relation to information held by prison authorities.

Those "thorny questions" remain to be decided in a case where - unlike this one - the applicant has standing to bring the case and where the issues are not moot, she said.