Grangegorman Development Agency is an agency of the Government of Ireland charged with redevelopment of the Grangegorman Campus, formerly within the curtilage of St. Brendan's Hospital. Grangegorman (Irish: Gráinseach Ghormáin) itself is an inner city area on the Northside of Dublin, Ireland.
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The Grangegorman Campus is a proposed €750 million education and health development by the Grangegorman Development Agency for Dublin Institute of Technology and the Health Service Executive. The site's design has been provided by the American architectural firm of Moore Ruble Yudell under the direction of Irish-born Architect James Mary O'Connor. The surrounding community is an equal stakeholder in the project and receives technical support from the Grangegorman Community Forum.
The campus, at 29 hectares, is the largest undeveloped site in the City of Dublin. It is expected that the campus will be linked to the proposed Luas extension (Line BX&D) from the city centre to Broombridge (Railway Station).
Officially opened in 1815, although it received its first patients in 1814, the Richmond Lunatic Asylum was initially created as a national institution for the reception of recoverable lunatics. On the 30 July 1830 the asylum was incorporated into the national system of district asylums and was renamed the Richmond Lunatic District Asylum. Under the district asylum system it received patients resident in the city and county of Dublin and the counties of Louth, Meath, Wicklow and the town of Drogheda. On 19 May 1921 its name was changed to the Grangegorman Mental Hospital. On 17 April 1958 its name was changed to St. Brendan's Hospital, which it retains to this day.[1]
In the mid-twentieth century, Grangegorman Mental Hospital had patient population of approximately 2,000 people. Its branch hospital, St. Ita's, Portrane, would have housed a similar number of patients. Although the original building of the Richmond Lunatic Asylum has now been largely destroyed, St. Brendan's Hospital continues as a psychiatric hospital and currently has five wards with a total of eighty-two psychiatric beds. It forms part of the HSE Dublin North West Mental Health Service and its catchment area is north-west Dublin.[2]