Violence is frightening and we just can’t defend ourselves...

prisons where an inmate had taken one of these psychoactive substances and it took six prison officers in riot gear to restrain him. The level of strength and force that they use against you on this stuff is absolutely horrendous. But you see everything from attempted sexual assault to people being stabbed.

We have seen staff having to have their faces reconstructed after being hit by bars by inmates.

The levels of violence is very significant and concerning. We There needs to be minimum sentences applied so that you send out a sign that it is unacceptable behaviour.

We also need to upscale our canine unit. We had conflict resolution dogs trained years ago but they were stood down. They should all be on standby in our big prisons, in Dublin, Portloaise, for example.

Some of the issues we have raised include personal protection equipment, the issue of modern methods to deal with incidents including incapacitant spray, what baton is best.

We are the only prison service that we know of that don’t carry a baton at work. We are not allowed to. They do so in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

What we want to know is when two prisoners are savagely assaulting each other what do we do?

We are going in with our bare hands. It’s completely unacceptable.

No other prison service in Europe is asked to do that.

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