Prison telephone list handling
Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire raised a prison telephone list issue arising from the murder of Amy McCarthy and the inclusion of her aunt on a prisoner's contact list. The Justice Minister said he would engage with the Deputy, seek a Prison Service report and consider how to address the concern.
This relates to the management of the telephone call list maintained by the Prison Service. I wrote to the Minister for Justice and Equality on the matter in September. While the letter was acknowledged, there was no substantive response.
This came to my attention as a consequence of the murder of the late Amy McCarthy, who was killed in Cork on 30 April 2017. Her partner and the father of her child, Adam O'Keeffe, was convicted of her murder. Amy was close to her aunt. Consequently, the aunt appeared on the telephone list of Adam O'Keeffe due to a previous offence and prison sentence. This is relevant because when Mr. O'Keeffe was in prison awaiting trial for the murder of Amy McCarthy the aunt received a telephone call from Mr. O'Keeffe. This was deeply upsetting and traumatic and caused a chill in her. The request I made to the Minister in my letter was simple.
It was that when somebody is charged with a very serious violent offence, the Prison Service should examine any existing phone number lists it maintains for prisoners to see if there are phone numbers of relatives or people connected to the potential victim and they should be removed. That is appropriate. It can be easily done. If it had been done in this instance, that trauma would have been prevented.
Comment on this
It does not sound unreasonable to me. I would be happy to engage with the Deputy, seek a report from the Prison Service and see how we can meet the concerns of Deputy Ó Laoghaire.