2,000 sign petition to save welfare home

MORE than 2,000 people have signed a petition to prevent the closure of a welfare home in north Cork.

St Francis Welfare Home in Fermoy has been under-utilised for a number of years.

The HSE transferred a number of patients to the welfare home while some upgrading work was carried out at the local community hospital.

Those patients were to be moved back to St Patrick’s Community Hospital today, but the HSE has postponed the move.

When they are eventually transferred back to the hospital it will leave just a handful of patients behind in St Francis Welfare Home.

The HSE said it has made no decision on the future of the welfare home, but sources have indicated the organisation will close it.

The home was built in 1976 to cater for up to 40 low-to-medium dependency elderly people, but most of those beds are not occupied.

Doctors in Fermoy and nearby Mitchelstown have leant their support to a campaign to prevent the welfare home’s closure and a petition has been put in a number of shops in the area.

Cork County Councillor and Fermoy Town Coun-cillor Noel McCarthy said he was urging every adult in the area to sign the petition.

Cllr McCarthy said: “We must mobilise public opinion if we are to convince Minister for Health Dr James Reilly of the importance of St Francis Welfare Home Fermoy as a health facility.”

A committee has been set up to organise the campaign and local politicians have been carrying out extensive lobbying of Government TDs.

Cllr McCarthy said that as a result of this it had been confirmed that Mr Reilly’s private secretary has been asked to liaise with the campaign group.

“What was important and an advantage to the campaign is that the planned transfer of patients from the home back to the community hospital has been delayed which gives us time to build up the case,” the councillor said.