Council votes to save historic city prison
Cork City Council has voted to start the process to add Cork’s Detention Barracks on Rathmore Road to the Register of Protected Structures.
A statutory formal notice will now be issued to the site owner – the Department of Justice – and the process for the structure to be added to the register will now begin. The process is expected to take approximately six months.
The council voted to include the surviving portion of the former detention barracks on Rathmore Road, as well as the remaining yard on the site.
The Detention Barracks has been the centre of controversy for several months, following an announcement by the Department of Justice that it intended to demolish the structure and construct a new prison in its place. The new prison is intended to have space for up to 230 male and 100 female prisoners.
However, those opposed to the plan hold that the prison is an important heritage site for the city. Former lord mayor of Cork Terence McSwiney, who died on hunger strike in Brixton Prison in London in October 1920, began to refuse food while interned in the prison on Rathmore Road by British authorities.
He had joined a broader hunger strike among prisoners in protest against the death of another prominent republican prisoner – Thomas Ashe – on hunger strike. The prison was also the site of the execution of Thomas Kent, who was executed by firing squad for his role in the Easter Rising in 1916.
Sinn Féin councillor for the North West Ward Kenneth Collins - who proposed the motion originally - welcomed the decision, but said that there was still work to be done.
“There is so much more to do to get the proposed demolition off the table and work together on the future of the Detention Barracks. The Irish Prison Service cannot now demolish this building, it is a proposed structure and it deserves that protection.
“Someday I hope to see young children walk through the doors of the Detention Barracks and connect with the history that shaped Cork city. I am proud to be able to say I played my part in restoring that connection,” he said.
There was also opposition to the building of a new prison in Cork’s northside.
Green Party councillor Oliver Moran said: “The original vision for the site, which was welcomed by the community was inclusion in the Land Development Agency’s plans to deliver housing for the area.
“We have issues in the local community with having a prison there already, and the practical impacts of living next door to a prison on the people living there.
“They’ve borne that, but what they don’t want to bear is another prison, particularly when the previous plan to provide housing is what people actually want,” he said.
While the decision in council was unanimous, An Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that it comes “very late in the day”.
Speaking at the opening of the new surgical hub at CUH on Monday, he said: “Where was City Hall ten years ago, 15 years ago in terms of listing that building? I think there’s other agendas afoot regrettably. I think in any building the historic or heritage aspect can be retained or marked.”
This article was produced with the support of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme funded by Coimisiún na Meán.