Man sentenced to three months in Cork Prison spent just three nights inside

Midleton District Court heard that conditions were “inhumane” as “the prison was full”

Cork Prison has been battling capacity issues since January this year. According to Irish Prison Service figures, it was operating at 111% capacity on Thursday with 328 prisoners in custody. File picture: Dan Linehan

A Cork man sentenced to three months in jail spent just three nights there as “the prison was full”.

Martin Long told Midleton District Court that conditions were “inhumane” and he had to sleep on a mattress on the floor for three nights.

“I went in but the place was full. I went in for three days, I was sleeping on the floor on a mattress," Mr Long said. “It was inhumane.” 

Judge Colm Roberts said that although he was supposed to ignore that information legally it seemed inhumane when people cited human rights concerns. He also said that he was getting very used to seeing Long before his courts.

Long, 31, of Loughaderra, Castlemartyr, Co. Cork, had been convicted of driving without insurance. He was sentenced to three months in jail but served just three days due, he said, to prison overcrowding.

A suspended sentence, for an offence of driving without insurance, could have been triggered in Midleton District Court on Thursday. But Judge Roberts said he would decline to trigger the driving offence sentence.

Unprompted,  Long assured the court that he had conditions to keep the peace. He said that he was “getting on very well” with his mother, and was doing up a place for her beloved cats at her home.

“You might bring me in a picture sometime,” Judge Roberts said jokingly. Mr Long was represented in court by solicitor Joseph Cuddigan.

Capacity issues

Cork Prison has been battling capacity issues since January this year. According to Irish Prison Service figures, it was operating at 111% capacity on Thursday with 328 prisoners in custody.

Cork Prison has an operational capacity of 296 and is a closed, medium security prison for men. It is the committal prison for Cork, Kerry and Waterford.

The new Cork Prison, a €42m state-of-the art facility when it opened in 2016 where Mr Long was briefly incarcerated, replaced the old Cork Prison, where prisoners were forced to slop out and which was described as Dickensian and archaic by the Office of the Inspectorate of Prisons.