The High Court found that Wayne Kinsella’s continuous confinement for 11 days in a padded cell at Mountjoy Prison breached the State’s constitutional obligation to protect his person. It refused, however, to order his immediate release, giving prison authorities an opportunity to remedy the conditions. The judgment records that he was transferred to Cloverhill Prison the next day.
Kinsella brought an application under Article 40.4.2 of the Constitution, arguing that his prison conditions made his detention unlawful. At the time, he was serving a five-month sentence for theft and was also on remand awaiting trial for murder, then scheduled for May 2012 in the Central Criminal Court. His theft conviction took effect on 1 June 2011, after he withdrew an appeal, and he was moved from Cloverhill to Mountjoy.
The judgment says Kinsella was held in a basement observation cell, padded throughout and furnished only with a mattress. It measured about three metres by three metres and had a small window, whose shutter’s operation was disputed. Kinsella said he had no reading material, radio or television, and that a cardboard box served as the sanitation facility. The court found it was not disputed that he had spent virtually all of the preceding 11 days in the cell. He was allowed one six-minute phone call each day.
Deputy Governor Joyce agreed that Kinsella should have received an hour of recreational exercise and an opportunity to shower, but could not challenge his evidence that he had not received them. The judge accepted that the authorities were trying to protect Kinsella, who was considered at risk if allowed to mix freely with most prisoners, and that they had repeatedly sought alternative accommodation. The judgment attributed the difficulty to a shortage of suitable single cells.
The court held that detention in those conditions for more than a week fell below the minimum standards required by Article 40.3.2, regardless of the crime of conviction or charges faced. But it concluded that the breach did not then make the detention entirely unlawful for the purposes of the narrow Article 40.4.2 inquiry. It cited the authorities’ genuine safety concerns and efforts to find suitable accommodation, and said it was proper to give them a further opportunity to act.
The application for release therefore technically failed. The judge warned that if the conditions continued, Kinsella could make a fresh release application or take other legal steps. In a postscript, the court said it was informed after delivering judgment on 12 June 2011 that a place had become available at Cloverhill and that the transfer, planned for the following morning, took place on 13 June.