More than €4,800 a week to care for two disturbed boys

THE cash-strapped Health Service Executive is spending more than €4,800 weekly to operate a special care unit for two disturbed boys in Limerick, it emerged yesterday.

A total of 20 highly paid care workers are employed at the unit, Coovagh House. It was opened last April, having been built in 2001 at a cost of €5 million.

Coovagh House is located in the grounds of St Joseph’s psychiatric hospital.

Following a query from the Irish Examiner, a spokesman for the HSE said yesterday the projected running costs for the nine months it will be open in 2007 will be €1,733,176.

Coovagh House opened for a brief period from September 2003 to April in 2004, by the former Mid-Western Health Board, but was forced to close due difficulties in getting staff.

More than €250,000 was spent by the HSE in staff recruitment drives in Canada and in Europe.

Coovagh House was one of three centres built in 2001, on foot of a High Court order, the previous year, by Mr Justice Peter Kelly.

He had made the order due to the lack of adequate places, countrywide, for disturbed teenagers. He said there were no secure accommodation centres for out-of-control teenagers coming before him.

Coovagh House was designed to cater for up to five troubled boys in the 11 to 17 age group.

When staff recruitment had met with difficulties in 2005, a spokesman for the HSE had said: “There is an international shortage of skilled childcare professionals and our difficulties are no different from those experienced elsewhere in the childcare sector.”

Fine Gael’s Dan Neville said: “While the number of children, due to be cared for at Coovagh House, is small they are nonetheless very disturbed young people in need of urgent attention from the State.”