INSIDE THE 'MINI-PRISON' BENEATH IRELAND'S MAIN COURT BUILDING

THESE are the hidden hallways of a bustling underground "mini-prison" that sits right beneath Ireland's main court building.

- BY PAUL HEALY

This newspaper gained unprecedented access to the massive holding cell area of Dublin's Criminal Courts of Justice in Parkgate Street - and to Ireland's largest remand prison Cloverhill, in an exclusive video podcast to be released today.

In the Shattered Lives podcast special, available on YouTube, three governors of the Irish Prison Service also opened up about the reality of the committal process - bringing prisoners to and from the CCJ and adjusting them to the realities of jail life.

They also revealed to us the grim reality that weapons have been dropped into prisons by drones and how tensions remain behind bars to this day due to the Kinahan-Hutch feud.

Speaking to us inside a hallway consisting of 21 holding cells situated right beneath the courts in Dublin, Paddy Moran, Assistant Governor of Mountjoy Prison, told us: "As you can see as we're walking, there's a number of different holding cells.

"This would mimic what would actually happen on a larger scale in an actual prison, where we have to keep the different prisoners from different factions separated.

RIVALRY

"It might be to do with feuds or it could be to do with all sorts of things like debts, people who might have given information or might be perceived to have given information to the guards.

"We have to protect them while they're in custody and keep them separate from each other."

Assistant Governor Moran is a senior official in a prison that was at one stage entirely segregated - due to the bitter rivalries of the Kinahan Hutch feud, which killed 18 men.

He told us of the unique challenges of that time - and how many of those tensions haven't gone away behind bars.

"That caused significant headaches within the prison service because there were large numbers of different gangs around the country that were, you know, pledging their allegiances to different sides in that particular high-profile feud," he revealed.