On-duty prison officer placed on leave after brawl spills out of pub
Gardaí and IPS launch investigations into violent lunchtime incident
A UNIFORMED prison officer has been caught on video repeatedly punching a civilian outside a pub while on duty.
The violent incident, which is now the focus of separate Garda and Irish Prison Service (IPS) investigations, will place a renewed focus on the behaviour of officers on duty.
Recorded during lunchtime on Monday, September 18, the footage shows the officer pushing another man out of a pub and punching him at least a dozen times. The officer involved has been placed on leave, on full pay, pending the outcome of an IPS investigation. During the incident several other individuals can be seen surrounding the civilian as he is punched to the ground.
In the recording, the uniformed officer can clearly be seen holding the civilian by the collar of his jacket with his left hand as he pummels the civilian’s head, face and body with his closed right fist.
The civilian, meanwhile, can be seen trying to protect his head with his hands and arms. At one point, just before the altercation concludes, the civilian can be seen throwing one punch at the prison officer’s face.
When contacted by the Irish Mail on Sunday this week, the officer acknowledged his involvement in the incident and asked that we do not mention alcohol.
‘This is not going to help my situation – just to let you know that – in any way shape or form,’ he replied when told this article would be published.
‘I would be happy if you didn’t mention alcohol for starters,’ he added. There is no evidence on the video of any alcohol being consumed. The footage has been widely circulated in prison officer WhatsApp groups together with a voice note recording from an apparent prison officer that purports to describe the incident.
According to the voice note, the officer was among a number of prison staff inside the pub at lunchtime when the civilian took footage of them on his phone. A confrontation inside the pub is said to have ensued after the civilian indicated he was filming them allegedly drinking in the pub while on duty.
The note suggests, however, that the civilian threw the first punch. The MoS outlined the voice note to the officer and asked him if there was anything he would like to say to help explain the circumstances – particularly whether there was any element of self-defence involved. ‘There is, but I don’t want to put my foot in it,’ he responded. ‘I’m between a rock and a hard place here now.’
The prison officer went on to state that it was not normally like him to behave violently.
‘This is definitely not like me,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know what I can say to you here now, if it’s going to be used against me.
‘I’ll put it this way,’ he continued. ‘I’m definitely not in the wrong on this. It doesn’t look like that – in all the videos and yokes like that – but I’m not. So I don’t know. I don’t know what I can and can’t say to you.’
Although the exact circumstances of the incident remain under investigation – and there is no proof of anyone consuming alcohol on the video – the matter will inevitably place a renewed focus on the long-standing issue of prison officers drinking on duty.
The issue is something IPS management and the Department of Justice have struggled to stamp out. For example, in 2000, an Evening Herald investigation photographed officers from Mountjoy Prison drinking up to four pints each in a local pub before returning to work. At the time, the behaviour was widely condemned and the matter was raised in the Dáil – but little changed. This lack of change was demonstrated 15 years later when a 2015 Inspector of Prisons report drew attention to the ‘overpowering’ pressure on officers to conform to the drinking culture in place among many officers. ‘Staff spoke to us of the incessant pressure to conform to behaviour which was at best unprofessional and at worst misogynistic and even misanthropic,’ the report reads.
‘This leads some staff to act in ways which are inappropriate. For example, in a number of prisons we heard that some staff regularly consume alcohol during lunch breaks and return to duty without any rebuke from senior staff.’
However, what the authors found ‘particularly disturbing’ was the ‘apparent unwillingness or inability’ of prison bosses to address the matter.
The issue once again was brought into focus in 2018 when the new Inspector of Prisons, Patricia Gilheaney, was refused entry to a jail by a drunk prison officer.
‘He appeared to be intoxicated,’ Inspector Gilheaney wrote in her 2019 annual report.
She added that there was a ‘strong smell of alcohol’ as the officer had difficulty reading her ID card.
Such problems were acknowledged by IPS director general Caron McCaffrey in an email sent to staff in July 2019.
‘There are occasions when some staff make a conscious decision not to act in line with our policies, protocols and procedures, i.e. failure to adhere to night-check procedures, being under the influence of alcohol, not adhering to escort procedures etc,’ she wrote.
Since then, a new code of conduct has been introduced across the IPS which specifically addressed alcohol and substance abuse. At the time, Ms McCaffrey promised a crackdown saying a ‘more robust’ approach to discipline was needed.
Since then, various protected disclosures, seen by the MoS, have raised the issue again. One disclosure describes how an officer, who is also alleged to be involved in fraud and theft from prisons ‘regularly spends time in a local public house while on duty’ and returns to work intoxicated.
Related concerns in the disclosures are related to alleged practices that facilitate on-the-job drinking. This includes allegations that officers ‘fraudulently engage in clocking each other in and out for payment regardless of actual attendance at work.’
Later, during Covid in 2020, there were further news reports of officers on the job meeting up in the car park of the Midlands prison during lunch to drink cans. But the most publicised incident occurred in September 2021 when three prison officers tasked with escorting a gangland member to court allegedly went on a drinking session during the court proceedings.
The incident occurred when Kinehan cartel member, Peter ‘Peader’ Keating was being sentenced at the Central Criminal Courts in Dublin.
As first revealed by the Irish Examiner, the three officers brought the prisoner from Portlaoise Prison to Dublin and then went drinking. They were subsequently unable to drive the prisoner back, requiring a fourth officer, who should not have been driving, to take the wheel. According to the reports, on the way back to Portlaoise one officer threatened to urinate in the prison van unless it stopped. This resulted in an unauthorised bathroom stop.
Speaking to the MoS this week various prison sources said drinking on duty remained a problem among officers. ‘It’s a blight on the prison system, that kind of behaviour,’ one source said. ‘The culture of the prisons always had drink involved – every prison in the world has it,’ the source added.
An IPS spokesman said the Irish Prison Service does not comment on staff matters. However, he said that the IPS was aware of an incident that occurred on Monday, 18 September 2023 ‘involving prison officers’.
He added: ‘The incident is being investigated by the Irish Prison Service and An Garda Síochána.’
‘I’d be happy if you didn’t mention alcohol’
‘Prison culture always had drink involved’