Newspaper watch: And the press play along

The brutal killing of Gary Douch in Mountjoy Prison on 1 August turned the media's attention to the appalling state of Ireland's prisons. The following day, the Irish Times reported that Michael McDowell had ordered an independent report into the killing. Conor Lally predicted the inquiry would be likely to "expose major failings" in the system. He was able to make this prediction with confidence, since the problems in our prisons are well-known and have been repeatedly highlighted and faithfully ignored in recent years.

On 9 August, Carl O'Brien, writing in the Irish Times, recalled the warnings of the Irish Human Rights Commission "about the dangers of accommodating psychiatric prisoners in Mountjoy", delivered to the minister in November 2004. On 17 August, the Irish Times revealed the contents of the reports produced by the state's 13 prison visiting committees, delivered to the minister eight months before. Conor Lally's article described how "some of the complaints have been well-ventilated in recent years" but "reduced budgets have led to a worsening of conditions" in the last year.

On 24 August, two prisoners died in Mountjoy. On the same day, McDowell released the fourth annual report of the Inspector of Prisons, Dermot Kinlen, which had been given to him in April. Kinlen's report expressed extreme frustration that several of his recommendations had "been repeated annually since [the first report in 2003], but are ignored by the current minister and his department". Such was his frustration that he described the attitude of the minister as "frightening and fascist".

The combination of the deaths in Mountjoy and the harshly critical tone of Kinlen's report might have been expected to grab frontpage headlines. However, a Department of Justice leak intervened. Thus, on Friday 25 August, the front page of the Irish Independent exclusively announced that the "government is preparing an unprecedented pre-election blitz on illegal immigrants", relegating Kinlen's report to the inside pages, where the account of his scathing attack on the minister was muted beyond recognition. Curiously, the report's striking use of the inflammatory f-word was not mentioned. Perhaps the Independent considered it a trifle rude to associate the minister with fascism on the day that they were given the honour of announcing his proposal for a harsh new regime to target a powerless minority.

The simultaneous release of Kinlen's damning report and the leak about the "blitz" on illegal immigration was so suspicious that it couldn't be ignored. Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Jim O'Keefe, claimed "the timing of the information looked like an attempt to end the focus on the two scathing reports about the prison service". Diarmuid Doyle, writing in the Sunday Tribune, noted that the author of the leaked story was Sam Smyth, who has been McDowell's favoured conduit for leaks.

Political opposition to the draconian immigration proposals was muted. Sam Smyth noted in the Independent that "speculation is also rife that Fine Gael and Labour are preparing their own package of legal reforms on immigration". If these early signs are any guide, we can look forward to an election campaign dominated by politicians pandering to the perceived prejudices of the population while well-known problems with well-understood solutions are ignored. And the press will happily play along.p