Questions asked about the security at the Maze Prison after the discovery of a 70 metre escape tunnel.
In a search of H Block Seven in the Maze Prison, prison officers discovered rubble from an escape tunnel in two of the cells. The tunnel was only discovered when the ground above it began to subside.
Serious questions are being asked as to how this tunnel could be dug in what is supposed to be the most secure prison in Europe.
The tunnel was seven feet deep with electric lighting installed and stretched just 90 feet away from the outer wall of the prison grounds. The tunnel was supported by the legs of prison chairs and bed boards. The tunnel was dug from Block Seven which holds 95 IRA prisoners, who have since been relocated.
Prison Officers paint a bleak picture of security within the Maze and say that the paramilitaries run their own blocks and are not even locked into their cells at night.
Chairman of the Prison Officers Association, Finlay Spratt, says that the prisoners control their own living accommodation and do what they wish.
We no longer lock them up. They're unlocked 24 hours a day.
The lack of security raises the question as to who is in charge at the Maze. Searches at the prison are rare and the DUP say that before the last search, the authorities had to give the IRA 48 hours notice.
DUP MP Peter Robinson says that it is no surprise that the prisoners can dig tunnels under these circumstances. However, these claims are rejected by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Sir Patrick Mayhew who says that the prison service faces a very difficult task at the Maze Prison.
Block H Seven was also where the mass breakout of 1983 was launched when 38 prisoners escaped in the biggest mass breakout in British prison history. Among the escapees was Gerry Kelly, now a Sinn Féin negotiator and a candidate in the British general election. Gerry Kelly says that if he had been one of the prisoners trying to escape, he would be very disappointed. Inmates see themselves as political prisoners whose duty it is to escape.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 24 March 1997. The reporter is Michael O'Kane.
