McDowell reveals plans for jail redevelopment

Housing for several thousand people on a site worth €200 million is envisaged for the current location of Mountjoy prison in plans laid out by Minister for Justice Michael McDowell this afternoon.

Mr McDowell introduced his development team for the project this morning at the Department of Justice building.

Shi-Fu Peng, of Heneghan Peng Architects, explained that by 2013 Mountjoy Village would be a "community that can re-engage with the character of the villages around it".

The optimism inside the press conference was in contrast to sentiments outside, however, where residents from the Rolestown and St Margaret's Action Group had gathered to voice their anger at the lack of consultation over the new prison site at Thornton Hall in north Co Dublin.

Formerly a farm, Thornton Hall is a 150-acre site and represented the cheapest option for the Government at €200,000 per acre or a total of €29 million. The new prison is scheduled for completion in 2010 and features "very big scope for outdoor recreation", according to Mr McDowell.

In his presentation the Minister outlined the selection procedure that resulted in the choice of Thornton Hall and described it as an "open and transparent process".

However, Teresa McDonnell of Rolestown and St Margaret's Action Group claimed the residents of her area have been completely left out of the process. She described the site as "unsuitable, unsustainable and in the heart of an agricultural area.

"There is no infrastructure and there is still no plan for infrastructure," she said. "In January 2005 we got a letter around our houses saying that people would be meeting within a couple of weeks. We are still waiting for that meeting.

"We had one meeting with the Minister after 15 months in which he said that he will not talk to or meet with anybody who is against this proposed plan. So he is not going to meet with residents of our area."

The Oireachtas will have to approve the plans for the site, which are yet to be drawn up, before April next year.

In a decision that is not up for discussion, according to the Minister, the site will house the new Central Mental Hospital after its relocation from Dundrum. This will leave a site worth approximately €300 million in south Dublin.

He dismissed suggestions that this would be a clumsy "symbolic" gesture and argued that it would all be taken care of in the "design process".

Mr McDowell was also keen to allay fears that the Mountjoy Village development would be exclusive and affordable only for a few.

He said the aim was to "look to a broader concept of urban renewal in order to bring families back to the city centre".