Mental health campaigners have called on the Government to rethink plans to move the Central Mental Hospital to north Dublin after it emerged that the project will need rezoning and planning permission.
Local politicians have also signalled their intention to vote against the project if it comes up for consideration before Fingal County Council.
Council officials have told the HSE that the proposal to move the hospital in Dundrum to Thornton Hall in north Dublin will require a variation of the county development plan, a spokeswoman confirmed yesterday.
A new prison planned by the Department of Justice for the same site does not require planning permission but the hospital move is not exempt, according to the council. Because it is being developed by the Department of Health, normal planning rules apply. With a majority of Fingal councillors opposed to the prison/mental hospital proposal, any motion to rezone the Thornton Hall site for a mental hospital is likely to be defeated.
Schizophrenia Ireland said the news that planning permission was required should encourage the Government to "take a breather" on the issue. "It's an opportunity to rethink things, as the whole process will be much slower than anticipated," the group's director John Saunders commented. The organisation favours the building of a new hospital on the existing site in Dundrum, which would be funded by the sale of some of these lands, or on a greenfield site not attached to a prison.
However, the Government has indicated in recent weeks that it intends to press ahead with the move of the hospital to Thornton Hall. Mr Saunders said the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, Jimmy Devins, has told mental health campaigners in the past fortnight that it stood over the plans laid by the previous administration.
The mayor of Fingal, Fine Gael councillor Alan Farrell, said he believed any proposal for the site which came before the council was likely to be defeated. It was not an appropriate use of land to site a mental hospital next to a prison, he believed, because it did not "send out the right signal".
However, Mr Farrell cautioned that the Fingal county manager had the power to overturn the decision of councillors, although up to now this had happened on one occasion only.
The staff of the Central Mental Hospital and carers' groups have also voiced their opposition to the plans and have said the new hospital should not be located beside a prison. The Department of Health said it was fully aware the project would need planning permission and was confident any difficulties could be resolved.
