Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

It has happened in the relatively recent past. That is not acceptable. If somebody is a danger to himself or others, the Central Mental Hospital must be organised on the basis that it can adequately deal with such a person. It must have sufficient rooms to accommodate all the people who are properly committed by prison doctors to that hospital for treatment, where they can be humanely and decently dealt with.

That is why I am determined to have the Dundrum complex, which is old and out of date, replaced by a modern, forensic psychiatric institution in close proximity to the new prison campus at Thornton. It is not acceptable that psychiatrically ill prisoners are shuttled between two institutions——

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