A parish priest and his parishioners have threatened legal action against the Western Health Board if it closes a 130-year-old Mayo church located on hospital grounds owned by the board.
St Mary's Church in Castlebar is to close on December 3rd because, the board says, its location poses a health and safety risk.
The church is in the grounds of Castlebar's psychiatric hospital, opposite the new main entrance - following a £22 million development - to Mayo General Hospital, owned by the board.
"The health board have given us two main reasons for closing St Mary's," according to Castlebar parish priest Canon Paddy Curran.
"They say its proximity to the main general hospital entrance may hinder emergency traffic and they say the church building is needed as a library for the new nursing school at the adjoining Castlebar campus of the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology."
At a public meeting earlier this week, it was decided legal action would be taken to prevent the church's closure, Canon Curran said.
"A number of parishioners and myself have signed an affidavit and we will put a legal injunction on the board preventing the closure of St Mary's and will follow along the legal avenues opened to us to retain the church. We do not want to be unreasonable but the health board have given us no choice."
He added that he and the parishioners were "not prepared to let St Mary's Church be closed down".
Father Curran said requests to meet the head of the board, Dr Sheelah Ryan, were turned down. The hospital's general manager, Mr Noel Brett, said: "We cannot have anything hampering the main entrance to the hospital and the accident and emergency area. The location of St Mary's Church alongside the new entrance simply poses too great a risk in terms of public safety and so the church is to be closed."
The Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, said at Mass in St Mary's last Sunday that he wanted it to be clear that there was no agreement between the church and the health board over the proposed closure.
"In fact, we were presented with a fait accompli in this regard, being informed by representatives of the same authorities in the course of a meeting that the matter had already been decided by them."
The church in St Mary's has been in existence since 1870 and has since served patients and staff at the hospital. Thirty years ago it was opened to the public for Sunday Mass, and up to 200 local residents use the church each week.
Some £30,000 had been collected locally to put a new roof on St Mary's Church just two years ago. According to Mr Brett, that money is to be returned to Castlebar parish funds.