Campaign against location of €30m prison complex stepped up

dublin | miscellaneous | news report

Wednesday August 31, 2005 12:02

by resident - RSMAG

info at residentsssayno dot com

Kilsallaghan, Co. Dublin

Prison Campaigners Front Page Add

The Rolestown St Margaret's Action Group (RSMAG) has placed an advertisement opposing Thornton Hall - the new home of Mountjoy Prison and the Central Mental Hospital - in the Irish Independent

RESIDENTS battling to block a new €30m jail in north Dublin yesterday took their campaign to the front page of Ireland's biggest selling daily newspaper.

The Rolestown St Margaret's Action Group (RSMAG) has placed an advertisement opposing Thornton Hall - the new home of Mountjoy Prison and the Central Mental Hospital - in the Irish Independent.

The advert calls on the Government to look at other sites and mocks the qualifying criteria applied by the Department of Justice expert committee which selected the 150-acre site.

Nessa Shevlin, spokeswoman for the protesters, said the committee had rejected the St Margaret's location but Justice Minister Michael McDowell had pushed ahead with the plan.

"Thornton Hall is totally unsuitable by the expert committee's own criteria.

"We have been trying to tell Minister McDowell and the other Cabinet members that the Government has made a huge mistake by agreeing to buy this site and by forging ahead with this plan. But they are not listening, they don't want to hear," she said.

Thornton Hall is the planned accommodation for about 1,000 inmates of Mountjoy, St Patrick's Institution, the Training Unit and the Dochas women's jail. And patients from the Central Mental Hospital will be housed in an adjoining facility.

The advertisement questions the huge cost of the site, its suitability and the selection criteria used. It also says planning permission will not be needed for the facility.

"If it goes ahead, it will result in a massive waste of taxpayers' money and will have untold consequences for our community, environment and heritage," Ms Shevlin insisted.

The deal for the land - at almost €200,000 an acre - is due to be sealed in October and Ms Shevlin claimed the Government should pull out now or risk wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money.