Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)

The Minister of State has experience as a physician. Does he not agree with the advice that was offered by a number of experts — including some from Australia and New Zealand — in recent times in respect of this matter to the effect that locating a therapeutic hospital beside a custodial establishment is the wrong way to proceed? The experts to whom I refer also referred to the inevitability of the culture of and approach taken by the hospital becoming more custodial rather than therapeutic in nature. A hospital is a place of recovery, not one of control. It was stated that where such co-location has occurred in other countries, members of staff from custodial institutions have been used to contain difficulties that arise in the adjacent hospitals. It is inevitable that the latter will happen and this will lead to the Central Mental Hospital being stigmatised.

See this speech in context