First the prisoner punched him. Douch attempted to protect his head, but the prisoner knelt over him, sending punches raining down onto him. Douch was five feet five inches tall and weighed nine stone; his attacker was a man of six feet two inches and 15 stone. Then came the kicking. The prisoner stood over Douch and savagely stamped onto his head. His foot repeatedly slammed down on Douch's head, knocking it against the hard, cold floor.

It was a brutal assault carried out by a prisoner who just weeks earlier had been subjected to rigorous psychological examination at the state's Central Mental Hospital. Within minutes Douch was dead. Five other prisoners stood back and watched in silence as his life was ended in a holding cell in the basement of the antiquated Mountjoy Prison. To ward off any intervention, Douch's attacker turned to the other men watching the assault and challenged one to "bite my c**k"; to another prisoner he said "rape me if you f***ing can".

Douch was no stranger to violence. He was serving a three-year sentence for assault and had previously threatened to burn his own mother out of her home. But he wasn't in fighting form on the day he was savagely set upon by a fellow inmate. Heroin addiction had weakened him, and just hours before his death he had asked to be moved from his cell out of fear that he was to be attacked.

It was Gary Douch's misfortune that prison officers moved him to a holding cell in the basement which was already housing five inmates. In truth, none of them should have been there.

The basement cells are designed to hold prisoners only temporarily, not to keep them overnight. But such is the overcrowding in the Victorian-era prison that inmates sleep wherever mattresses can be placed.

John Lonergan, governor of Mountjoy, recently outlined for the Sunday Tribune the conditions in which prisoners are held. "It's a case of every night looking for space on the floor to stick mattresses down, " he said.

The death of Gary Douch highlights so many problems facing the prison . . . drug addiction, mental instability and chronic overcrowding. It is a mixture that often explodes into violence.

Just five days before Douch was beaten to death in the basement of Mountjoy, Nigerian national Goodwill Udechukwu was stabbed and assaulted by a group of up to ten men on the first day of his life sentence for the murder of his wife.

Two other knife attacks in the prison later in the week illustrated the level of violence inside the prison's walls.

Prison officers at Mountjoy believe that, unless drastic action is taken, they will not be able to hold the jail up to this weekend. One prison officer told the Sunday Tribune that the atmosphere is "tense and full of fear. Staff are just waiting for something far worse to break out. It can't be stopped unless there's urgent action taken, if there's the political will for it".

Two cells in the B basement area are notorious among staff. It was in one of these that Gary Douch was murdered. A prisoner who is locked up for a month for non-payment of a fine can find himself sharing one of these cells with half-adozen others, some of whom are remanded on charges of violent crime such as assault.

Each of the two cells measures three metres by four metres. They contain one built-in bench, a hand-basin and one toilet. The toilet is often blocked with layers of toilet paper and excrement. Prisoners place strips of toilet paper over the rim of the bowl to act as a seat. The handbasin is often used as a urinal and a distinct smell comes from it. There are no beds for the men to sleep on, just a pile of wafer-thin mattresses which have been used by many other men in the days and weeks before. Many of the duvets which keep the prisoners warm are marked with burns from cigarette butts. Sometimes the cells, which are meant to operate as a holding area for around ten prisoners at most, have held over 20. They were not designed to be used as sleeping quarters. When an overflow occurs of more than five in each cell, the other prisoners are given mattresses and told to sleep in the reception area.

At 6.30am, all the prisoners are locked into the holding areas where they're served breakfast.

The men are let out at 8.30am to stretch their legs in the small enclosures that make up the inner yards. They are locked up again at 12.30pm until 2pm for main lunch. That process is repeated several times daily, 365 days a year. At 4.30pm the men return to the cells for tea and are let out once more. From 7.30pm until 10.30pm they return to the cells, when they are told whether they will sleep in the cell or reception area.

Prison officers say violence breaks out frequently among the men. Bullying is rife among the inhabitants of the overcrowded cells. On occasions, prisoners have been sexually assaulted by a gang of men while others looked on and did not intervene out of fear of assault or later reprisal. Prison officers insist that the incidence of sexual attacks is very low, though many believe a serious rape is inevitable.

One prison officer paints a disturbing picture of the atmosphere in the prison this weekend.

"Staff and prisoners are in each other's faces.

There is a high level of fear among prison officers at the moment. Three stabbings and one murder in little more than one week do not occur for no reason. It's part of something building up for months due to understaffing and overcrowding of the prison, and the cancellation of most activities like workshops, " the prison officer said.

A year ago the men could have spent some of their day working in the workshops but because of underfunding and a shortage of staff to keep watch over the men, these facilities are frequently unavailable.

"They're more often than not cancelled. It happens all the time, " insists Eugene Dennehy, deputy general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association (POA), himself a former Mountjoy officer. "It is a case of the minister [Michael McDowell] being pennywise and pound-foolish.

What's happening is that the men are now herded into recreation yards with nothing to do."

It is estimated that of approximately 500 prisoners in Mountjoy, only around 40 to 50 are occupied with activities, including seven in the kitchen and a few dozen in the one functioning workshop area under D Base. The conditions have become a breeding ground for unrest and conflict.

"Gangs that exist outside the prison are now controlling the jail and acting with impunity, " one prison officer told the Sunday Tribune.

Justice minister McDowell could hardly have been surprised at the crisis in Mountjoy last week. A memo from the assistant Mountjoy branch secretary of the Prison Officers' Association, John Ward, dated 17 February 2006, and sent to the prison authorities, predicted the impending violence with remarkable accuracy.

"Animals would not be held in such conditions, " he wrote, describing the state of holding cells. "That any person would be held in such conditions is evidence of the complete and utter disregard that the Irish Prison Service authorities have for the basic human rights of persons in custody. These conditions pose a serious health hazard for all within the prison. . . Warehousing inmates in these conditions; within such a prison, along with an even further withdrawal/reduction of services to inmates, are the ingredients for violent unrest in this prison."

Since then things have got much worse.

"What's happening in Mountjoy now is a huge test for the minister [McDowell]. It is out of control here now and worse will happen if nothing is done. If McDowell cannot control gangs in his own jail, how can he control them on the streets?" a senior prison source asked.

The Sunday Tribune has learned that prison officers at Mountjoy have asked that a state of emergency be declared at the jail this weekend, to facilitate the funding of extra staff to cover the current crisis, but jail authorities have said this cannot be done at present.

So bad is the overcrowding problem that the A division in Mountjoy Jail, which was deemed unfit for human habitation five years ago, has been reopened to accommodate prisoners. The prison inspector, judge Dermot Kinlen, notes that governor John Lonergan does not defend the conditions which the judge found at the jail. One prison officer said of the governor: "We'd be lost without him. He's been holding the place together."

Judge Kinlen has been one of the most outspoken critics of McDowell's regime. His reports are forensic in their dissection of the crisis in accommodation and welfare standards in sections of the Irish prison system.

After Douch's murder, McDowell named former deputy secretary at the justice department Michael Mellett to head the inquiry into both the killing and the role of prison staff in monitoring the cells.

Kinlen declined to comment on the circumstances of Douch's murder but he has raised a serious question about McDowell's proposed inquiry into the killing. In a statement to the Sunday Tribune this weekend, 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 acknowledges that it is up to the minister to select whoever he wants to conduct such a probe.

However, McDowell's failure to select the judge or a third party, places a major question mark over the perceived independence of the Douch inquiry. It is understood that Fine Gael plans to raise its concerns next week with the government over the minister's selection of a former justice department official to head the inquiry.

Kinlen's latest report for 2005-2006 was presented to the minister last April but has yet to be released by McDowell. It is understood this report is again highly critical of the inhuman conditions in Mountjoy.

Just two weeks ago, John Lonergan told the Sunday Tribune that conditions in the prison have been particularly bad this summer. "It's been particularly bad over the last month, " he said. "We are getting an average of 20 new prisoners a day, but we had 48 in one day earlier this month. We're doubling up and even quadrupling up in cells because we just haven't got the space. We're like the hospitals - we simply haven't got enough beds."

Lonergan estimates that 80% of inmates in Mountjoy are addicted to heroin and says that it is "almost impossible" to restrict the distribution of drugs amongst the prisoners.

"Mountjoy is 156 years old and the building has not changed one bit since 1850, " he said. "There is no way it is an adequate prison for the year 2006. It is a million miles from the prison we should have. The sooner we get out of Mountjoy and into the new prison the better."

GOVERNOR'S CRITICISMS JOHN LONERGAN, governor of Mountjoy Prison, has consistently criticised the conditions in which he must manage over 500 inmates at the antiquated jail, and has frequently challenged the claims of justice minister Michael McDowell.

In a comment made during McDowell's drive to reduce costs in Irish jails last year, Lonergan said workshops and other facilities at Mountjoy were unable to operate due to funding cutbacks. The governor said work-related projects were of great importance in rehabilitating prisoners and that "cutbacks have consequences".

"If they [prisoners] feel better about themselves, they are less likely to treat others with disrespect, " Lonergan said.

He also raised major doubts about the government's strategy of ridding jails of drugs and drug use, questioning the effectiveness of mandatory screening, and said the state "should be doing a lot more" to assist chronic addicts to overcome their dependency.

In what was seen as a major rebuke to McDowell's tough-talking stance on drug abuse in prisons, Lonergan said in a 2004 interview: "Unless we have drug-free communities, we won't have drug-free prisons".

The Mountjoy governor has also described society's attitude to ex-prisoners as "appalling", and has been strongly critical of employers and the state for failing to assist in the integration of ex-convicts into workplaces. Lonergan has said the lack of follow-up care for prisoners has frequently left released inmates "worse off than before they came in".

10% ON MINOR OFFENCES OVERCROWDING in prisons is exacerbated by the number of prisoners jailed for failing to pay a court-imposed fine. Over 10% of prisoners in Mountjoy are serving short-term sentences for minor offences. Many of these short-term prisoners were not originally given custodial sentences but were later jailed for failure to pay fines.

Of the 517 prisoners in Mountjoy, 54 are serving sentences of less than six months. Over half of these are serving sentences relating to road traffic offences. As a committal prison, Mountjoy must accept all prisoners referred to it by the courts and cannot, unlike other prisons, turn away prisoners once its bed capacity has been reached. The number of prisoners being referred there for minor offences, therefore, leads to massive overcrowding.

Almost a quarter of prisoners in Mountjoy are serving sentences of less than one year. Another quarter are serving sentences of between one and three years, while 109 prisoners . . . or 21% . . . are serving three to five years. There are 27 prisoners serving life sentences in the jail, which accounts for 5% of all prisoners in Mountjoy. Some 50 prisoners are in the A division of Mountjoy, which was deemed unfit for use five years ago.

Cork prison also faces huge problems with overcrowding caused by shortterm prisoners. According to the Deputy General Secretary of the Prison Officers' Association (POA) Eugene Dennehy, there were 277 prisoners jailed last week in Cork prison, where the capacity is for 150 inmates. Of the prisoners in Cork jail, 16% are serving sentences of less than six months.

MOUNTJOY'S FUTURE THE Mountjoy Prison complex may now be at the centre of a storm about overcrowding, violence and infestation due to its dilapidated state, but it will soon be transformed into a modern, city-centre village.

Justice minister Michael McDowell last month announced that the jail site, located off the North Circular Road in Dublin 7, will be completely redrafted architecturally to house several thousand people. The prison is being replaced by a new development on a 150acre site at Thornton Hall, north county Dublin. As well as replacing Mountjoy, this site will also be the new location for the Central Mental Hospital which is currently in Dundrum.

"For decades, the lack of space and the poor physical infrastructure in Mountjoy prison has impacted severely on the prison system to provide even the most basic services for prison rehabilitation. In the area of work and training, medical facilities and education, the building is simply not "t for this purpose, " McDowell said, announcing the new layout for the Mountjoy site.

The Mountjoy regeneration project is to be carried out under the direction of the Of"ce of Public Works, with a design team headed by the Heneghan Peng "rm of architects. As well as redeveloping the prison, a series of architecturally-led redesigns is being carried out in the area around the jail. The Mater hospital has recently received a major facelift, and plans are under way for development at Dalymount Park soccer ground and the adjoining Phibsboro shopping centre. The canal walkway between Phibsboro and Drumcondra has recently been redeveloped. The new Thornton Hall prison complex will include running tracks and football pitches and will accommodate prisoners under different security regimes.

COSTS AND PRISON OFFICERS JUSTICEminister Michael McDowell has a long history of entering into conflict with the Prison Officers' Association (POA). Members of the POA were last week eager to point out that the minister carries the responsibility for the chaos that has gripped the crumbling and overcrowded Mountjoy jail.

Prison officers voted 12 months ago in favour of a new pay deal, ending a long-running and at times bitter dispute about overtime with McDowell. The minister had threatened a programme of privatisation and prison closures if the pay offer was not accepted, to achieve cost savings of /25m a year. That saving will now be achieved through a similar reduction in the prison overtime bill of more than /60m a year.

The minister's focus on cutting costs is central to the problems in Mountjoy, according to the POA, whose deputy general secretary Eugene Dennehy this weekend told the Sunday Tribune that McDowell had treated the prison system with a "pennywise, pound-foolish" approach.

The overtime deal gives prison officers improved basic pay in exchange for working an average seven hours of overtime a week. McDowell had threatened to privatise the prison escort service, as well as two of the state's 'open jails', Shelton Abbey in Wicklow and Loughan House in Cavan, if the deal was not accepted, while a major prison officers' strike was mooted by the POA.

The final agreement sees prison officers earn a salary from /48,000 up to /70,000, to include overtime. A once-off payment of /13,750 was also part of the deal. Overtime is discretionary for over one-tenth of staff and can be done by colleagues under agreement.

JBOTHER PRISON MURDERS