Construction on the new £2 million Dublin Medico-legal Centre is expected to begin next month on the site of the old city morgue, behind the Coroner's Court at Store Street. It will be completed late next year.
The centre will provide improved facilities for all those involved in or affected by investigation of deaths.
Dublin City Coroner Dr Brian Farrell said: "The facilities in the old morgue were totally outmoded in the modern age and, rather than try to modernise them piecemeal, a decision was taken to pull down the old building and replace it with a brand new structure. "We have taken into account the needs of the bereaved families, the pathologists working on the cases, the gardai and staff in planning the centre. It will bring death investigation into the 21st century with all the facilities needed for identification and storage of bodies as well as for training."
Up to 2,000 deaths requiring investigation are reported to the Dublin City Coroner each year. Many of the post mortem examinations, including all murder cases in the capital, are carried out at the City Morgue. Until the completion of the new centre, a temporary morgue has been provided at the O'Brien Institute at Marino. Under the Coroner's Act, the coroner must inquire into the circumstances of sudden, unexplained, violent and unnatural deaths. These include road accidents, suicides, deaths in Garda stations or prisons and deaths occurring in hospitals including psychiatric hospitals. The new two-storey centre will be connected to the Coroner's Court, and will include a waiting room for families and witnesses attending inquests.
The new centre will be better equipped to deal with disasters. The old morgue had storage facilities for only nine corpses, while the new building can store up to 120. The facilities at the old morgue were strongly criticised at the time of the Noyek fire off Parnell Street, and of the Dublin bombings and the Stardust disaster.
The old City Morgue was designed by the then City Architect, Charles J. McCarthy, in 1901. Mr McCarthy went on a fact-finding tour of English coroners' courts with the chairman of the Corporation Finance Committee, Councillor Joseph Nanetti, who is mentioned in Ulysses.
The morgue was built on the site of the old Custom House flour mills. It cost £4,504. The building it replaced became part of the original Abbey Theatre.
The morgue has been featured in a number of novels. Patricia Cornwell, who visited it to research her novel Unnatural Exposure, describes some of the fittings as being suitable for a "medical museum". It also features in Paul Carson's novel Scalpel. Mr Carson has argued for the retention of the old building because of its "unique atmosphere".