Mary White (Fianna Fail)

I am delighted with the news that the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum will not be built adjacent to the prison in Thornton Hall. The mental health commission, the Irish mental health coalition and many members of the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, including myself, were totally opposed to the building of the hospital beside a prison. One is in prison because of a custodial sentence. Being in the Central Mental Hospital is, it is to be hoped, a path to recovery and being brought back into society again. People there receive therapy and counselling and are mentally ill.

I am proud today on behalf of Professor Kennedy to whom I spoke this morning and who thanked me personally for my valiant efforts. I spoke on every occasion against the plan to move the hospital. It was the wrong decision in the first place. It was done for financial reasons. Apparently, the plan has now changed for financial reasons. I do not mind once the savage treatment of people with mental illness who were to be put adjacent to a prison is halted. I am delighted.