Plans have been agreed for a £26 million revamp of the State's Central Mental Hospital, following a year-long review of its services. Improvements at the 150-year-old hospital in Dundrum, Dublin, are to equip it to meet the needs of a modern forensic psychiatric service.
Developments, to be carried out over three to five years, will include 30 extra beds, the recruitment of consultant-led multidisciplinary teams and the appointment of a board of directors representative of various interested parties including the Departments of Justice and Health, the Court and Probation Services, health boards and the Garda. The hospital will continue to be managed by the East Coast Area Health Board.
It provides psychiatric care in conditions of high, medium and low security for those transferred from prison, those found guilty but insane and those transferred from local psychiatric hospitals who are in need of treatment in special conditions of security.
Some of the State's most notorious prisoners have been held there including the late triple murderer, Brendan O'Donnell, and John Gallagher, who was found guilty but insane in 1989 of the murder of his former girlfriend, Ms Anne Gillespie, and her mother, Mrs Annie Gillespie. He absconded from the hospital last July and went to the UK.
The changes follow a review of the service by a committee set up by the health board in conjunction with the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA).
The report from the review group found "the existing service shows signs of strain in meeting the current level of demand for hospital transfer, with waiting times that are considered to be excessive".
It added: "The per-capita number of high and medium secure beds is low by international standards, while the prison-to-hospital transfer rate is high."
It said the changes in the provision of psychiatric services nationally, with the closure of thousands of psychiatric hospital beds, "appears to have increased the numbers of mentally ill persons in prisons".
At present the centre has 89 beds. After the proposed developments it will have 120, including a 15-bed female unit and 30 rehabilitation hostel beds.