Ken Foy

It was basically to be on its way into the Wheatfield prison complex but in follow-up searches that were carried out by Gardaí targeting the gang behind it, I think it happened in North County Wicklow actually, a functional machine gun was discovered the following day.

It shows you this is organized crime.

It's not really the young lads who, you know, we're throwing stuff over the wall with great agility.

No, you go in through a visitor area.

We're basically brought... Ernie Day, our great colleague, and myself, we were brought on a tour by the prison governor and the governor who's the head of prison operations across the country.

So...

We were showed, you know, the various videos and we were brought around the exercise yards.

Yeah, and what's it like?

Is it small?

I know it's quite a big complex.

Yeah, yeah.

And overcrowding, of course, is a massive problem there.

But having been on a similar kind of tour of Clover Hill more than two years ago, it's not as bad there.

Yeah.

So we were brought in, shown a few cells.

And one thing, Niall, you'd notice...

Again, overcrowding is a big problem and senior prison staff say that apart from hand-in-hand with the drugs problem, it's the main reason for this increase in violence.

But being shown the various kind of cells, there was a very stark contrast between...

the living conditions that you could... There was no prisoners now in Nanny D cells when we were visiting, but they were being used.

There was a huge contrast between the living conditions for a prisoner in a single cell compared to...