The High Court has rejected a former Portlaoise Prison inmate’s claim for declarations and damages over the use of chamber pots and slopping-out during his imprisonment.
Sean Mulligan was convicted in the Special Criminal Court in December 2002 of membership of the Real IRA and sentenced to five years, backdated to his arrest in July 2001. He served his sentence on E Wing in Portlaoise Prison and was released in April 2005.
Mulligan argued that the absence of toilets and running water in his cell, poor ventilation and the need to empty a chamber pot into a communal sluice breached his constitutional rights and Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. He also said the conditions aggravated pre-existing haemorrhoid and anal fissure problems.
Mr Justice MacMenamin found that the sanitation and ventilation arrangements were primitive and significantly below the standards reasonably expected at the time. Prisoners should have had clean water and hand-washing facilities in their cells, while slopping-out was described as archaic and demeaning.
However, the court assessed Mulligan’s conditions as a whole. He occupied a single cell, had substantial daytime access to toilets, education, recreation and exercise, and had no complaint about prison staff. The evidence did not establish overcrowding, insanitary misuse of the sluice facilities or a serious threat to life or health.
The judge accepted that the conditions probably caused a recurrence of Mulligan’s colorectal symptoms. But Mulligan had not informed prison authorities of his relevant medical history and had made only one recorded haemorrhoid complaint during his detention. The court therefore found that the particular medical risk was not reasonably foreseeable to the authorities.
The constitutional claims failed. The court also held that the cumulative conditions did not reach the high threshold for inhuman or degrading treatment under Article 3, or establish a breach of privacy under Article 8.
The application was dismissed.