Indulging terrorists - Jail privileges unacceptable

THIS week’s Prison Officers’ Association (POA) conference in Castlebar should make anyone who still cares for this country sit up and take notice.

Early this week we were told of crime bosses running their illegal empires from their prison cells. Recent murders in Limerick underline the threat posed to this society by this practice.

Yesterday we were told of the fantasy world of the “paramilitaries” in our prisons. We were told that paramilitary murals, military drills, lax drug checks, blinkered security cameras and order-in steaks are part of a privileged regime for dissident republican inmates in Portlaoise Prison. Prison boss Brian Purcell confirmed that such indulgences existed he contended that there were “historical and valid” reasons for them.

The day the vast majority of the population of this entire island voted for the Good Friday Agreement, and the hard-to-swallow early-release clauses for prisoners it contained, those “historical and valid” reasons went out the window. There are no “paramilitaries” in Irish jails just deluded, anti-democratic terrorists and they should be treated as such.

Indulging their fantasies may be the easier option but it legitimises their lunacies and is little more than state-endorsed ambiguity towards those whose colleagues have already murdered three people in Northern Ireland this year. It must stop immediately.