James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

I am glad to hear a cost-benefit analysis is being done. Was a cost-benefit analysis done before the site was bought, given the extraordinary sum which was paid for it? I had hoped the Minister and the Minister of State would have taken on board the concerns of the professionals involved in the service, outside professionals and voluntary groups and their dismay at the thought that psychiatrically ill patients would be placed on a site beside a penal institution and would be stigmatised as criminals when their problem is one of mental heath.

I had hoped the Minister of State would say the Government was considering leaving it at the site in Drundrum where there is ample land and where there would still be land left over to provide money for the HSE. We would hope that money would be ring-fenced for psychiatric services. What was the initial cost of this project? Was the original plan a mere fig leaf for the Government to justify the extraordinary sum paid for the prison site?

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