{"id":629910,"date":"2026-09-19T21:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T21:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/629910\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T21:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T21:06:09","slug":"investigations-ongoing-after-nine-prisoners-overdosed-at-midlands-prison-on-friday-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/629910\/","title":{"rendered":"Investigations ongoing after nine prisoners overdosed at Midlands Prison on Friday \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/irish-prison-service\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/irish-prison-service\/\">Irish Prison Service<\/a> (IPS) has said it is working closely with the HSE following a number of overdoses at Midlands Prison in Portlaoise on Friday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It is understood that nine prisoners overdosed and three required hospital treatment. As of Saturday evening, one prisoner remained in the intensive care unit at Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Two prison officers were assaulted by a prisoner during the incident on Friday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The IPS said it is \u201ccommitted to preventing the access of contraband including drugs into prisons and [this] continues to be a high priority\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThe Irish Prison Service has committed to continuing to invest in new technologies and measures to support our efforts to keep contraband out of prisons,\u201d a statement said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cExtra vigilance is being taken within the prison and information for prisoners around the dangers of consuming contraband has commenced.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The IPS said its staff \u201chave increased the use of random and intelligence-led cell searches on a daily basis\u201d and that canine units carry out regular searches in prisons. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The prison service said it works closely with An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na \u201cwith regard to preventing contraband entering our prison\u201d and sharing information which has led to \u201cthe seizure of contraband\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The IPS appealed to prisoners, visitors, staff or members of the public with information about the trafficking of contraband to contact them via the free confidential telephone line (1800 855 717) and text line (086 180 2449).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Irish Prison Service (IPS) has said it is working closely with the HSE following a number of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-629910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}