'Inhuman and degrading': Prison inspector says inmates forced to sleep on floor due to overcrowding

Mark Kelly will tell the Oireachtas Justice Committee on Tuesday that at the end of 2024, the prisoner population was already 'many hundreds in excess of the numbers that could be safely accommodated', adding 'the situation described in my 2024 report has worsened significantly over the course of 2025'.

Ireland’s chief prison inspector says more than 600 people in jails are forced to sleep on mattresses on the floor in conditions that are “inhuman and degrading”.

Addressing the chronic overcrowding in prisons, Mark Kelly will tell the Oireachtas Justice Committee on Tuesday that at the end of 2024, the prisoner population was already “many hundreds in excess of the numbers that could be safely accommodated”, adding "the situation described in my 2024 report has worsened significantly over the course of 2025”.

Mr Kelly, an international human rights lawyer who has held the position of chief inspector of prisons since 2022, will tell the committee that — as of January 7 — the prison population had increased to 5,761 from 5,001 at the end of 2024, for a capacity of just 4,718, “meaning that 613 people living in prison were being obliged to sleep on mattresses on the floor”.

“The result is that many people living in our prisons are being held in conditions that are inhuman and degrading. Unworthy of Ireland in 2026,” he will say.

Mr Kelly will tell the committee he does not use such statements “lightly”, after 30 years inspecting prisons across Europe. 

I can say with confidence that the current conditions for some people living in Ireland’s prisons are amongst the worst that I have seen anywhere, at any time.

In 2024, the Council of Europe’s European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) visited Ireland and concluded “chronic overcrowding continues to plague the entire prison estate, with severe consequences for prison life in terms of the adequacy of living conditions and access to a regular regime of purposeful out-of-cell activities”, noting that during its visit it saw “many prisoners, including mentally ill individuals, were forced to sleep on mattresses or flimsy camp beds”.

Mr Kelly will note the executive secretary of the CPT Hugh Chetwynd, who in an “exceptional move” visited Ireland for a second time just before Christmas, said at the time the conditions in Irish prisons could represent a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The only way to lessen the gravity of the situation will be to focus on reducing the current prisoner population, Mr Kelly will say.

”Reducing the current prison population, not building more prisons, should be the priority.”

“As both my office and the CPT have repeatedly emphasised, no comparable jurisdiction has ever succeeded in building its way out of overcrowding,” he will say.

He will further call for the independence of his office to be strengthened, nothing the Department of Justice “firmly holds the purse strings of my budget”.