Quarter of prisoners fail or refuse to take drugs test 

The Irish Prison Service said almost 1,400 tests had been carried out on inmates with 99 recorded as either a refusal to take a test or coming back with a false result.

More than a quarter of prisoners tested last year for drugs either failed or refused to give a sample as part of a nationwide operational testing programme.

The Irish Prison Service said almost 1,400 tests had been carried out on inmates with 99 recorded as either a refusal to take a test or coming back with a false result.

There were a total of 268 definite positives along with 1,031 negatives, but overall testing numbers were down because of restrictions around the covid-19 pandemic.

The highest failure rate was at Mountjoy Women’s Prison where of the 24 tests carried out on prisoners, only 10 of them — or 42% — 
came back with a negative result.

At Mountjoy Men’s Prison, there were just 26 tests undertaken of which 11 gave a positive result for the presence of drugs.

The largest number of tests took place at Shelton Abbey, the open prison in Co Wicklow, where there were a total of 416 separate tests.

Of those, just 9% — or 37 tests — were found to be positive for traces of narcotics.

In Cork Prison, the failure rate was 35%, with 133 tests carried out, from which 46 were positive and 87 negative.

Three prisons — Arbour Hill, Limerick Prison, and Portlaoise Prison — carried out no operational drug tests last year, according to data released under FOI by the prison service.

Separately, details of a separate drug testing programme by prison healthcare teams show that 723 samples were taken from prisoners.

Of those, six were too diluted to carry out an accurate test, while there were 160 cases where a test was refused or the sample was unsuitable for testing.

At the Midlands Prison in Co Laois, 256 samples from 93 different inmates were suitable for testing by the HSE’s National Drug Treatment Centre Laboratory.

Of those 80 were positive for the presence of opiates, 23 for benzodiazepines, 44 for cannabis, and one for alcohol.

There were also other positive results for medications like methadone, intended to help wean people off their heroin addiction.

At Shelton Abbey, 30 tests were carried out on samples collected from 20 people.

Of those, only a single one showed the presence of cannabis but the rest were clear.

In Cork Prison, 18 samples from eight prisoners were tested, with one coming up positive for the presence of opiates, one for so-called ‘benzos’, and two for cannabis.

An information note from the Irish Prison Service said demand for operational drug testing had fallen during the pandemic but was now being ramped up again.

Weekly targets

They said agreed weekly targets were in the process of being set along with a centralised method for collecting data, and that this new system was expected to be in place by the end of the year.

A spokeswoman for the Irish Prison Service said: “The need for drug testing varies across the prisons and while there is central guidance to prison governors issued by our operations directorate it is a matter for prison management to determine if a prison requires testing.

“The purpose of this testing is to allow governors make decisions in relation to the management of prisoners in the interests of good order, security, health and safety in prisons.”