Sir, – As a Dubliner I find the €49 million development plans (Home News, November 14th) of the Rotunda Hospital to entrench itself further in its Parnell Square campus quite objectionable. Such expense must be hard to justify on financial grounds given that the maternity hospital will be decentralising from the city centre.
This north inner-city location remains one of the most moribund areas in the capital and badly needs the long-proposed face-lift as soon as possible. Why can suitable sites in the immediate vicinity of Parnell Square not be made available to meet the short- to medium-term exigencies of the hospital?
The hospital would thereby be enhancing the attractiveness of the quarter rather than diminishing it further.
Far from doubling down on its footprint on the square, the Rotunda should be considering how it can open up undeveloped parts of its campus to the public thus extending the Garden of Remembrance which was squeezed in edgeways at the top of the square in 1966 and can leave the visitor and tourist with a deep sense of claustrophobia. – Yours, etc,
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DESMOND FAGAN,
Co Dublin.