Disused €50m site offered as Garda post in bid to recoup State spend

Thornton Hall in North Dublin was bought by the State for €50m as a prospective prison site.

The Office of Public Works (OPW) pushed a farm in North Dublin as the solution to a Garda accommodation crisis in order to “recover some of €50m expended by the State” on that disused property.

In April 2015, then OPW commissioner Clare McGrath wrote to the secretary-general of the Department of Justice, Noel Waters, asking that Thornton Hall be considered as a replacement for the Dublin Garda Command Centre on Harcourt Square due to the “clear benefits in using the site for this purpose”.