The Sunday Tribune has learned that management at Mountjoy called a meeting with staff on Friday evening during which prison officers asked that a state of emergency be declared to facilitate the immediate deployment of extra security.

The deputy general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association (POA), Eugene Dennehy, confirmed that officers at the jail sought an urgent declaration of a state of emergency, but said the request had been denied.

"If the current crisis is not an emergency, then what is? , " he asked yesterday. "There's one man dead and three men stabbed. Prison officers feel under siege and have major concerns for the continued safety of prisoners and all staff at the prison."

Over 500 inmates are currently resident in the jail, which has a capacity of 450. Many of them have nothing to do all day following cut-backs in prisoner workshops and training introduced under a cost-cutting regime imposed by justice minister Michael McDowell.

McDowell's appointment of a former department official, Michael Mellett, to probe Douch's killing has this weekend come under fire from the independent inspector of prisons, Judge Dermot Kinlen. In a strongly-worded statement to the Sunday Tribune, Kinlen said he is "mystified as to why a former deputy secretary of the Department of Justice, who had responsibility for prisons within the department, was given the task of investigating the matter by the minister". Kinlen acknowledged that the minister may select whoever he wants to conduct such a probe.

However, McDowell's failure to select the judge . . . who has a track record of hard-hitting analysis of the minister's prison regime . . . or a third party . . . places a major question mark over the perceived independence of the Douch inquiry.

A spokesman for the minister defended the appointment of the former justice department official to oversee the inquiry into Douch's death, saying that Mellett was no longer attached to the department.

Kinlen's latest report for 2005-2006, which was presented to McDowell last April, has yet to be released by the minister. The Sunday Tribune has learned that this report is again highly critical of the inhuman conditions that prevail in Mountjoy.

A spokesman for the Irish Prison Service said that officials would meet with POA representatives this week to discuss the crisis.