FIRETRAPPERS

Garda raids smash dope and phone smuggling gang | Prison well past capacity as overcrowding at new high

- BY PAUL HEALY

WEEKLY 'firebomb' drone drops into a Dublin prison yard have been “stopped overnight" thanks to a new state-of-the-art wire mesh.

The Irish Mirror has learned that the Irish Prison Service constructed the new wire mesh over the D Yard of Mountjoy Prison after cunning criminals managed to set fire to packages that were dropped from drones and repeatedly burned through the old net on a weekly basis.

The construction of the new material, which sources say is far more impenetrable, is believed to have stopped a major crime gang's ability to drop drugs and mobile phones into the yard overnight.

It comes in tandem with a major garda operation this week that targeted the suspected ringleader of a behind-bars operation utilising these drones to drop drugs, phones and other illegal items into the yard.

CRISIS

The good news also comes amid a major crisis for Mountjoy Prison which we can reveal has hit an all-time population high of over 1,000 prisoners this week.

Sources say the drone problem had become so bad that a Dublin based gang was managing to have packages dropped into the yard on a weekly basis meaning potentially thousands of euro worth of illicit items were making their way into the prison.