Taoiseach can’t say if historic Cork prison can be saved

City councillors have voted to add the 220-year-old former Cork Prison to the protected structures register — but that process may be eclipsed as justice minister called for its demolition

The former Cork Prison has been vacant for a decade, and was replaced by the adjacent new prison. File picture

The Taoiseach has said he cannot guarantee that the 220-year-old former Cork Prison will not be demolished during the six months it will take to become a protected structure.

Last week, Cork City Council voted unanimously to place the old Cork Prison on the northside of the city — which at different times held both of Cork’s martyred lords mayor, Tomás Mac Curtain and Terence MacSwiney — on its protected structures register.

Cork City Council’s chief executive said that this process would take up to six months.

The old prison has been vacant for a decade, replaced by the adjacent new prison, which is now regularly overcrowded.

Justice minister Jim O’Callaghan has called for the old building to be demolished and two new facilities — one for 230 men and the other for 100 women — to be constructed on the site.

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Speaking on Friday, Micheál Martin said Ireland has a “very big problem” with a lack of prison spaces, and he could not guarantee that the old prison will not be demolished.

The old prison is part of the most seminal moments in the city’s history.

In August 1920, Cork lord mayor Terence MacSwiney began in the old prison the hunger strike that would end, 74 days later, with his death in Brixton Prison, bringing to international attention the cause of Irish freedom. His immediate predecessor as lord mayor, Tomás Mac Curtain, had also spent time in the then Cork Detention Barracks.

Built by the British Army in 1806, the old building became a civilian prison in 1972 and closed in 2016. It was replaced by the €45m, purpose-built 296-bed prison, built across Rathmore Rd from the original.

That prison now has capacity for 304 prisoners but has been routinely overcrowded in recent years.

When the old prison closed, the local community was promised various community facilities on the site, none of which came to pass.

The Irish Prison Service has said that a tender for the works on the old Cork Prison will be issued later this year, which will inform the decision on whether to proceed with demolishing the building.

On Friday, the Taoiseach said that while he respected the “pressures” on politicians, he had concerns about “politics putting something on a protected structures list because of political reasons and not because of architectural or historic reasons”.

Noting that the old Cork prison has been vacant for more than a decade, Mr Martin asked why it had not been listed as a protected structure before now, saying there had to be “due process”.

Former inmates of the old Cork Prison include Cork lords mayor Tomás Mac Curtain, who was murdered by British forces, and Terence MacSwiney, who died on hunger strike in Brixton Prison. File picture

“I think there has been a mixing of the jerseys here,” he said. He added that City Hall had taken the lead in remembering Terence MacSwiney, including at Terence MacSwiney Quay.

Asked if there could be no guarantee the building would not be demolished, Mr Martin replied: “No guarantee. I can’t. I’m not the minister of justice. I’m not the prison authorities.

“On the other hand, politically, people will ask us to get more places for prisons, and it’s a challenge,” he said.

“Our prisons are very crowded, and we have to do an interim programme to create more prison spaces, and we need more medium-term plans then for more longer-term capacity in our prisons.”

The Department of Justice and the Irish Prison Service did not respond when asked if they would respect plans to make the old prison a protected structure.