Daly and Wallace jailed and released within hours
INDEPENDENT TD Clare Daly was arrested and brought to Limerick Prison where she spent a hour and a half last night before being released over non-payment of a fine and breaching airport by-laws last year.
She and Independent TD Mick Wallace were both arrested separately by appointment at their local garda stations.
Mr Wallace was also brought to Limerick Prison and released on temporary release yesterday evening after only two hours.
Both TDs were found guilty of entering a restricted zone at Shannon Airport in July last year in a failed attempt to inspect a US C-130 and another military plane. They both refused to pay a €2,000 court fine.
Mr Wallace has said he will attempt to search more US military planes at Shannon Airport.
Speaking on arrival at the prison Mr Wallace said: ‘It probably won’t be as bad for me as it is for people in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.’
Passers-by shouted: ‘Well done Mick.’ Before his arrival, a banner saying ‘Free Clare Daly, Free Mick Wallace, Stop War Crimes’ was erected outside the prison by the Peace and Neutrality Alliance and Shannon-watch.
Limerick Prison, which has space for 220 prisoners, was slightly over capacity yesterday with 231 inmates. Mr Wallace said he had not been put in a cell at any point.
The Irish Prison Service declined to comment, saying that it did not reveal details of individual cases.
But sources said it was standard practice for people being sent to prison for non-payment of fines to be released within a day, and often within hours. Asked yesterday evening why he had been released so quickly, he responded: ‘I don’t run the system.’
He said he would ‘do it again’. ‘We’ll keep at this until the Government cops on to themselves, and stops allowing Shannon Airport to be used as a US military airbase to kill innocent people.’
He said he had been told under temporary release he could be rearrested any time in the next 30 days but it that it ‘would not be normal’. He added that he is ‘absolutely not going to pay’ the fine.