Figures from the Irish Prison Service on ‘restraint interventions’ indicate that there were 137 incidents in 2018, as compared to 91 in 2017, when recording of them began, the Irish Examiner reports.

Restraint interventions encompass situations where a prisoner is refusing to comply, including when they assault another inmate and officers are injured in trying to restrain them.

The figures also show that there were 110 ‘prisoner-onstaff assaults’ in 2018, up from 104 in 2017. In 2015, there were 91 such incidents.

The Prison Officers’ Association (POA) welcomed the publication of the figures.

Jim Mitchell, deputy general secretary of the POA said: “This is a brand new tool for recording interventions.

“This is the first metric I’ve seen and we welcome it. It gives a deeper understanding of the work we do.”

He added: “The vast majority of those interventions would have been prisoner-on-prisoner violence, so, to intervene in each of those, prison officers are putting themselves in harm’s way in order to save a prisoner,” said Mr Mitchell.

“There were 137 interventions in 2018. That’s a serious amount of interventions by a significant amount of staff — two or three prison officers or four, if a formalised intervention. These interventions are to prevent a prisoner being seriously injured, or worse, by another prisoner.”

The Irish Prison Service said: “It is important to highlight these instances to give a clearer picture of the difficulties prison service staff face in the course of their work.”

Mr Mitchell said that while on paper there is a trend towards more assaults each year, the figures do not capture the severity of individual incidents. He noted that in 2015 there were some very serious assaults on officers.