Premier Alex Scott pledged last night that green space from the Botanical Gardens would be incorporated within the building of the proposed new hospital on the site.

Addressing the fourth in a series of sustainable development public meetings entitled ?Sustaining Our Communities? at St Paul AME Church Hall in Hamilton, Mr. Scott said the Government had consulted widely on the matter. He told the audience he would instruct the architects that the Botanical Gardens ? which he described as ?this pristine area? ? should be incorporated ?in every way possible? into a unique hospital design.

?This means that the greenery will be incorporated into the design. You won?t just walk up to the door and the green stops. It may go into the building. If there?s a tree that needs sustaining, you may find that tree next to your hospital bed in the future,? he said.

As reported on Tuesday, the Sustainable Development Round Table ? the independent team tasked with gathering the public?s views for the Island?s first Sustainable Development Plan ? described consultation on the controversial scheme as ?insufficient?.

It also pledged to press for an alternative to concreting over even one square inch of the Botanical Gardens.

Some at last night?s forum complained they found out the hospital site plan through the media. But speaking to after the meeting, Mr. Scott insisted: ?There have been meetings after meetings after meetings to get feedback. There comes a point in time when a decision has to be taken.?

Department of Communications and Information officer Ayo Johnson added that full details of the plans and consultation process were available on the website www.bermudahospitals.bm.

The hospital was just one of a wide range of topics discussed during the meeting, which focused on the key issues of affordable housing, social services provision, poverty, and the plight of the elderly. The audience addressed questions to panellists lawyer Charles Richardson, Women?s Resource Centre Director Penny Dill, Berkeley Institute teacher David Chapman, XL Foundation president Gavin Arton and Larry Williams, executive director of Habitat for Humanity, Bermuda.

One participant, Jonathan Dill, suggested that building taller buildings would help provide more affordable housing, and asked whether tax relief on building supplies had been considered.

In reply, Mr. Williams said ?There?s no shortage in Bermuda of housing for people to reside in. The key thing is affordability. The number game is not the issue. You can go up and up but building and building does not necessarily solve the problem.?

This prompted Stewart Mott, a non-Bermudian owner of a nine-acre property in Scaur Hill, Sandys, to question Government policy. ?As a non-Bermudian I?m not allowed to sell off even one or two acres for affordable housing,? he said.

A man clad entirely in black, who did not give his name, said he was wearing that attire ?because I?m in mourning for this country?. He asked the panel what they thought of the fact that he knew a young lady who is a drug addict and is having her sixth child. ?What can we do? What do we do?? he asked.

Ms Dill replied that there was no simple answer, but that the correct services must be provided. Another man who did not give his name asked Mr. Arton how tenuous international businesses on the Island were.

He replied that such is the nature of insurance and reinsurance businesses ?one stroke of the pen in the US or UK or perhaps some world event could change that for us?.

On the topic of Independence, he said Independence in and of itself would not cause international business to leave but that ?Independence badly managed? would do.

Raymond Santucci, who described himself as an ex drug addict who had been clean for ten years, questioned why the Camp Spirit and Harbour Lights programmes have just 16 places for addicts. He said that if he stepped outside the venue ? on the junction of Court and Victoria Streets ? he would find more than that.

Agreeing with his point, Mr. Richardson called for a residential drug treatment centre on the Island, commenting: ?I have always thought it ironic that when we have a fire like drug addiction raging in Bermuda, all we have used is buckets.? But he said that no one wanted such a facility near their home.

And Robert Somner took the opportunity to make his point that social problems today stem from what he sees as the mistaken closing of trade and hospitality training schools in the past.

He suggested that one of the two public ?mega schools? could be used for this purpose entirely, telling the panel: ?Nobody cares about Bermuda because they haven?t built it.?

All of the feedback from the current series of public meetings will be fed into the final draft of the Sustainable Development Plan, to be produced by the Government by the end of the year.

The next meeting, on Tuesday September 19 at St Paul AME Centennial Hall in Hamilton will focus on the theme ?Living within Bermuda?s limits.?