Paddy O’Gorman spoke to women who had been jailed in the Dóchas Centre at Mountjoy this morning on Today With Seán O’Rourke, in light of Judge Seán Hughes criticising its governor Mary O’Connor releasing a serial thief after three days.

During his discussion with the former prisoners, they told him how mobile phones are used in the centre.

First woman: “See the way that’s designed to go off, if metal, but there are mobile phones that are made completely out of plastic.”

O’Gorman: “So the boss will only find metal, it won’t find plastic. The boss chair.”

First woman: “No.”

O’Gorman: “Yeah. And it’s bodily orifice scanning systems, so what? You just sit on it?”

First woman: “Just sit on it.”

O’Gorman: “But you don’t have to undress, isn’t that right?”

Frist woman: “No.”

Second woman: “I seen a fella there a while ago, his phone was that size.”

O’Gorman: “That’s very small. Did you have a phone when you were in prison?”

First woman: “No but I’d use of a phone like.”

O’Gorman: “You’d use of a phone.”

Second woman: “More than one. It was a foreign girl saw them, chargers and all.”

First woman: “You’d want to see what they go through to charge them, a load of bleeding batteries and then…”

Second woman: “What you do is you take the phone apart, right? You get wires. You put one wire, you know where your battery goes into your phone, you know the three gold bars, you put the..talk over each other…then you have to get eight batteries, you have to get four of them, wrap them up in paper and Sellotape them together and then stick the other wire into them. So one end of the wires is in the batteries and the other end is in the phone. You can’t…if you move it, you lose contact. So you’re literally in the bed, like that, talking [quietly] ‘hello’..if it moves you’ll blow the phone. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Pic: Beat the boss mobile phone (Buyandsell.ie)