No methadone clinic here, says health centre landlord

THE landlord of Cork city’s newest primary healthcare centre has strongly denied that a methadone clinic is to be established at the Blackrock premises.

Kieran Coughlan, of Lyonshall, who owns Blackrock Hall with his business partner Clare Riordan said “there will never be a methadone clinic here”.

“If there are rumours circulating, they are not true. As the landlord, I can categorically tell you that the terms of the lease to the HSE expressly stipulates that their section of the building won’t be used for methadone dispersal. Blackrock Hall is also a private clinic and we won’t be having any such facility here”.

The new centre opened in January and is adjacent to the plush Eden development on the former Ursuline’s Convent site where, at the height of the housing boom, Pierce Construction was charging up to €500,000 for terraced houses.

Nine GPs have moved from surgeries in nearby Mahon, Blackrock and Ballintemple to lease suites at Blackrock Hall. It is understood that they have an estimated 29,000 patients on their books – 12% of all GP patients in the metropolitan Cork area.

Private primary healthcare developer, Touchstone, run by Fergus Hoban, has leased another substantial area at Blackrock Hall and are providing health services including a pharmacy, dentistry, physiotherapy, dietetics, nutrition, psychotherapy, counselling, chiropody and podiatry, osteopathy, acupuncture, clinical massage, dermatology, ophthalmology, speech and language therapy, audiology, domiciliary care and home nursing, diagnostics radiology and a wholefoods shop.

The HSE has leasedanother 20,000 squarefeet on the first floor of Blackrock Hall where from next month, they willprovide community nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech andlanguage therapy as wellas mental health services.

Blackrock Hall also includes a coffee shop to help make the centre “become part of the heart of the community”.

Mr Hoban, who has ploughed up to €12m into Blackrock Hall, plans to develop more primary care centres in Cork over the coming years.