Seanad debates
Wednesday, 16 April 2003
Central Mental Hospital: Motion.
In England, public private partnerships have been put in place – I am not opposed to anything of this nature – where hospitals are built by the private sector. However, this is a costly process because the institution involved usually has to take out either a mortgage or a lease to pay back the private company and some of its resources have to be spent on repayments. We could do something like that in Dundrum, but this is exactly the sort of thing the amendment indicates that the Minister of State is trying to stop by buying off leaseholds of properties currently occupied by the State on a long-term payment basis in order to reduce the Office of Public Works' ongoing rent roll in the future. That is a line of progress which will not be very good because the Office of Public Works does not want to do it here so I presume it does not want the State doing it in another direction by getting involved in a public private partnership.
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