‘Inappropriate’ to put jail near hospital

A SUPPORT group for the mentally ill has said it would be entirely inappropriate to have a jail on the same campus or site as the Central Mental Hospital.

Caroline McGrath, deputy chief executive of Mental Health Ireland, said her organisation would oppose any plan to site a detention facility in the same space as a health facility.

Different needs, different support, different structures, Ms McGrath said in response to a controversial suggestion made by the junior health minister Tim O’Malley.

Mr O’Malley, speaking on the Tonight with Vincent Browne Show, linked a planned super-prison with redevelopment of the State’s largest mental hospital.

A new prison, to house up to 1,000 inmates, will be built to replace Mountjoy. Following advertisements seeking expressions of interest from landowners with 100 acres in Greater Dublin, 30 were received.

The Limerick TD said: “The Minister for Justice thinks a Central Mental Hospital should be adjacent to a jail.”

A spokesperson for Justice Minister Michael McDowell said no decision has been made as to where the new prison will be built. The Office of Public Works is examining the 30 submissions received.

Aides to Deputy O’Malley, a party colleague of the justice minister, said nothing has been decided in relation to the Central Mental Hospital and that he only mentioned it in connection with the new prison “as a possibility”.

The mental hospital in Dundrum, south Dublin, sits within a large, valuable land bank. Mr O’Malley suggested either the prison might be built on the land or that the CMH and the prison might be constructed close to each other on a greenfield site elsewhere.

He said: “The Minister for Justice has already stated his wish to close down Mountjoy because conditions there are not satisfactory and he has discussed with me the proposal to build a complete new jail instead of Mountjoy and also, though obviously not in the same unit, a new Central Mental Hospital.”

“It would be entirely inappropriate to have a jail on the same campus or site as a health facility, including the Central Mental Hospital,” Ms McGrath said.