The bakery at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison has been shut down amid concerns that gangland figures were using it as a route for delivering drugs and other contraband.
The disclosure appears in internal Irish Prison Service (IPS) documents obtained by the Irish Mail on Sunday under the Freedom of Information Act.
Mountjoy’s bakery had previously been held up as a model for prisons in other jurisdictions, including Hydebank Wood prison in Belfast, which accommodates women and young offenders.
However, the FOI records describe the bakery, which supplied bread to all of Dublin’s prisons, as a known “channel for contraband”.
The description was included in an October 2024 email from Mary Leydon, a governor in the IPS Human Resources Directorate.
Her email was sent while IPS management and staff were negotiating the bakery’s closure.
Alongside referring to the bakery as a source of contraband, Ms Leydon cited “H&S [health and safety] concerns over the years” and said management had raised “serious concerns” about the facility.
Mountjoy’s bakery had previously been used as a model for prisons in other jurisdictions, including Hydebank Wood prison for women and young offenders in Belfast
“This was a challenging negotiation process but we believe after years attempting it, we have finally achieved its closure,” Ms Leydon wrote.
She said the shutdown would take place “on phased basis over 12-18 months”, giving other prisons time to find an alternative supplier.
The decision to close Mountjoy’s bakery was first announced publicly in the Dáil a year later, in November 2025, by Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan.
Mr O’Callaghan did not mention specific concerns about contraband, but said the closure would lead to “enhanced security”.
In response to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy, Mr O’Callaghan said it cost €660,000 a year to supply bread to Dublin’s prisons through Mountjoy’s bakery. That was €110,000 more than the cost of using a commercial provider.
He also said the bakery would be replaced by “a training facility to deliver certified training in baking skills to people in custody.”
Several high-profile prisoners have worked in the Mountjoy bakery over the years, including convicted boom-time thief Michael Lynn and Mr Moonlight murderer Patrick Quirke. There is no suggestion that either man was involved in moving contraband through the bakery.
Disgraced lawyer Michael Lynn
Mr Moonlight killer Patrick Quirke
Prison sources said the bakery was regarded as a sought-after job among inmates. Located on the same footprint as the kitchen, just off E Division, its goods entrance was between 30 and 40 metres from Mountjoy’s main gate.
“The bakery in Mountjoy would have been something that was highly successful back in the day,” one officer told the MoS.
“It produced a lot of good bread and a lot of work for prisoners as well. It gave them something useful to be doing.”
But the bakery was also known as a weak link that gangs were able to manipulate to get drugs and phones into Mountjoy.
‘All the stuff coming in from suppliers is not always checked by dog units and search teams,’ another officer told the MoS.
He added that the loading bay doors for food deliveries to the bakery and kitchen were not always appropriately locked.
‘If you’re bringing in something – especially a substance such as white flour – it can become very easy to bring in something extra, and that was always the problem with it,’ they said.
‘Everybody knew the stuff was coming in via deliveries. Prisoners had been caught removing drugs from the underside of delivery trucks and so on.’
The sources told how service lifts in the loading bay and food preparation areas can be used to distribute drugs further into the depths of the prison once they are delivered to the bakery.
But the bakery was also known as a weak link that gangs were able to manipulate to get drugs and phones into Mountjoy
According to prison sources the bakery is considered a sought- after job for inmates. Situated on the same footprint as the kitchen, just off E division, the goods gate for the bakery is within 30-40 meters of the main gate into Mountjoy
The scale of this smuggling can be judged by a successful, intelligence-led operation implemented by the IPS in 2020.
In November that year, the largest haul of contraband ever intercepted was found hidden in bags of sugar and sprinkled with coffee to confuse sniffer dogs.
The consignment, hidden as part of a food truck delivery, included drugs, alcohol, phones and SIM cards.
In all 10,000 tablets, bags of cocaine, cannabis, 30 phones, SIM cards, bottles of whiskey, steroids and an exercise band were discovered.
So successful was this smuggling route, that gangs were able to supply contraband to order to individual prisoners.
This is evident by the manner in which drugs packages were individually wrapped with prisoners’ names on them.
According to gardaí at the time’ the cocaine had an estimated value of €140,000, the tablets were valued at €20,000, and the cannabis was worth €5,000.
Speaking at the time of the seizure, IPS Director General, Caron McCaffrey, said: ‘There were 600 boxes, with each being painstakingly taken off the truck and searched, and it was in the middle of the last pallet of items, that it was detected, in two boxes which purported to be sugar but when those boxes are opened, they contained a very significant amount of contraband.’
Ms McCaffrey said the drugs could have resulted in deaths among the prisoner population had they made their way into Mountjoy.
‘They certainly result in inter-prisoner violence and it can also result in assaults against our staff, specifically given the content and… it undoubtedly would have resulted in very significant overdoses and potentially deaths within the prison population.’
An IPS spokesperson told the MoS: ‘The Irish Prison Service does not comment on security or operational matters’.
