THE government wasted €250,000 reserving a prison site at Dublin’s Newlands Cross that it never used. The money was forfeited to a Co Dublin farmer after Mary Harney led a campaign to stop the jail being located in her constituency.

Cyril Dowling, the farmer, was paid €250,000 for a year-long right to buy a 32-acre site that he owned for €15.75m, but the option was never exercised. The state gave up the money when Michael McDowell, the justice minister, withdrew plans for the juvenile detention centre in the face of opposition from Harney and other local politicians. The Irish Prison Service tried to sell the option by public auction in June 2003 but failed to find a buyer. It lapsed in October 2003.

Harney voiced her opposition to the project in letters to McDowell, who was also her party president, and to Tom Parlon, a PD junior minister at the state property agency, the Office of Public Works.

At McDowell’s request, the commissioners of the OPW assessed the local objections and recommended the project should not proceed.

There are already two jails about two miles from the Newlands Cross site in Harney’s Dublin mid-west constituency; Cloverhill remand facility and Wheatfield prison, built side by side in north Clondalkin.

Enda Kenny, the Fine Gael leader, yesterday accused the tanaiste and health minister of backing her constituents while failing to help a campaign to stop the Central Mental hospital being moved. The government has decided to replace the run-down facility in Dundrum with a new hospital located next to a new prison in Co Meath, being built to replace Mountjoy.

Kenny said that Harney had earlier “backed the groups working in the mental health sector who wanted a separate facility to avoid further stigmatisation of mental health patients”.

The government purchased a 150-acre plot close to Ashbourne for €30m on which it plans to locate the prison and hospital. The facilities would have separate entrances.

McDowell has estimated that the current prison site in Dublin city could fetch anything between €50m and €100m, while property industry estimates of the Dundrum mental hospital site run to as much as €100m.

Harney said that any money made on the transfer of the hospital would be invested in community psychiatric facilities.

The state-appointed mental health commission, the Human Rights Commission, Schizophrenia Ireland and Aware, the depression lobby group, have all opposed the location of the hospital close to the prison.

In early 2003, Harney’s predecessor in health, Micheal Martin, backed a proposal from a joint health board, department of health and justice committee to build a new building on the existing Dundrum site.

But in March 2004, Tim O’Malley, the PDs’ junior health minister, revealed that McDowell was in favour of moving it to the prison site. O’Malley said this week he would be working with groups in the mental health sector to address their concerns.

Kenny said: “It is a pity Harney didn’t lobby as hard on behalf of the mental health sector and its patients as she clearly did on behalf of her constituents to secure the removal of a prison facility in her constituency on the Naas Road. At her first major test in respect of this forgotten constituency (mental health), the minister has failed badly.”

The tanaiste said yesterday that while the new hospital would be physically close to the prison, the two facilities would not be linked in any way.

Harney said the hospital would have separate governance and a separate entrance, and would continue to be run by the Department of Health.

Harney, John Curran of Fianna Fail, and Paul Gogarty of the Greens all lobbied strongly against McDowell’s plan for a juvenile detention centre for 100 prisoners near Newlands Cross.

The tanaiste wrote to constituents in Mary 2003 that she had “strongly opposed the plan and made strong representations to my party colleagues, McDowell and Parlon, and impressed upon them the genuine concerns of the local community”. “I am pleased that these representations were taken on board,” she added.

The government has said that the Co Meath site was the cheapest and most suitable of those shortlisted for the new prison and hospital complex. It was priced at €200,000 an acre while landowners in nearby areas were seeking €323,000 and €500,000 an acre. Fire and garda services were deemed to be available in Finglas and Ashbourne while the nearest hospital was in Blanchardstown.

Residents, however, point out that it was zoned as agricultural by Fingal county council in its recent development plan.

Ciaran Lawlor, a spokesman for local residents opposed to the prison, said: “This is a rural area. The land is zoned as agricultural. There are few amenities and facilities here. There is no sewerage, for example, and very few buses running to the area. The fire and garda stations are some distance away. This is not a case of us not wanting this in our back yard. It’s a case of the area not being the right place for this development.”

Lawlor is representing a client opposed to the siting of the prison in Thorntown, who is considering legal action against the Department of Justice.

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