The number of acutely mentally ill and actively psychotic people in prison now far exceeds the number of available medical cells in these facilities, figures released to RTÉ revealed.

In the last quarter of 2025, the number of people in prison waiting for admission to the new CMH, which opened in late 2022 at a cost of almost a quarter of a billion euros, was at its highest level since before the closure of the old hospital in Dundrum, Dublin, in 2022.

More than 340 psychiatric patients are currently being held across the prison system, and those 38 people mentally ill enough to require treatment in the new centre in Portrane are instead being kept in prisons around the country on a lengthy waiting list.

Families of those forced to rely on prisons for psychiatric care have come forward to speak out against the conditions in which they are kept.

Among those are the families of several psychiatric patients who died in Dublin’s Cloverhill Prison over a five-year period and who are demanding answers regarding the circumstances of their care and their deaths.

Figures show the rate of prisoners with acute mental illness in custody has increased dramatically in recent years. In the country’s dedicated remand centre, Cloverhill Prison, there is a medical landing with capacity for 27 people but in recent months there have been more than 55 actively psychotic people held in custody simultaneously.

This is ten times higher than it was a decade ago and has tripled in the last four years alone.

The in-reach psychiatric team in Cloverhill Prison is led by Professor Conor O’Neill, who told the RTÉ Investigates documentary: ‘Some of the most severe mental illnesses are conditions like schizophrenia and related conditions like disaffected disorder and bipolar disorder.

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‘These are some of the worst mental health conditions you can have where people can hear and see things that aren’t real. It’s usually voices saying abusive or threatening things. Some of these people are severely mentally ill.

‘Some people have brain injuries and dementias and are unable to look after themselves. These are people that should be in hospital, not in prison.’

The HSE said it remains committed to ensuring that every person receives the right care, in the right place, at the right time.

A statement on behalf of Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said: ‘While the Department of Health and the HSE fully appreciate the increasing demands on the prison service, it is important to stress that the NFMHS [National Forensic Mental Health Service] campus in Portrane is a specialist tertiary healthcare facility.

‘This facility is approved for the purposes of the Mental Health Act 2001 and the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006 and every effort will continue to be made by the health sector to help address acknowledged waiting list pressures to access the NFMHS overall.

‘Minister Carroll MacNeill, Minister [Mary] Butler and officials in the Department of Health will continue to work collaboratively with the Minister for Justice and his department to further improve and develop the provision of specialist psychiatric care for people in prison and to build upon the very good joint progress both sectors have made over recent years.’

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The HSE acknowledged ‘the issues that have been raised in relation to HSE mental health services and regret any impact this may have had on people and their families’.

It said that because prisons are neither ‘approved centres’ or ‘designated centres’ in law, in-reach prison clinicians cannot prescribe or initiate certain medications that require the legal protections.

As of yesterday, there were 5,742 prisoners in custody across the system, with 519 mattresses on the floor. A total of 35 prisoners were on date-to-date temporary release, 570 were on temporary release, and 1,227 were on trial or remand.

The total number of prisoners in the system was recorded as 6,519, compared with a national bed capacity of 4,726.

RTÉ Investigates: The Psychiatric Care Scandal is on RTÉ One at 9.35 pm tonight.