Petition of 10,000 signatures handed into Dáil for Tipp hospital

Dan Power from Carrick-On-Suir at the protest outside Leinster House on Kildare Street, Dublin. Picture:Gareth Chaney/Collins

A petition containing over 10,000 signatures seeking the reopening of a Co Tipperary district hospital for respite care was handed into the Dáil today.

A busload of campaigners from Carrick-on-Suir handed over the document calling for St Brigid's District Hospital to be returned to its former use.

Last year, the HSE announced plans to alter St Brigid's into a community health centre for chronic disease management, specialising in diabetes supports, with internal conversion works on both floors of the premises now completed for the new role.

The plan was greeted with anger by campaigners who saw the hospital lose palliative care use during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In recent weeks, as restrictions lifted, they canvassed doors across Carrick, homes at the foot of the Comeragh Mountains in Co Waterford, and communities in nearby south Kilkenny.

"People just want to see St Brigid's back open," one campaigner, Elaine Wall, told the Irish Examiner.

Without Brigid's people either have to go to St Theresa's in Clogheen — over 40 minutes away —
or you need to apply for respite and find a [private] nursing home that can take a patient.

In their petition, they cite a question by the Minister for Older People, Mary Butler, with a 'tick the box' option on the document.

Kate Coughlan from Carrick-On-Suir at the protest. Picture:Gareth Chaney/Collins

"Based on alleged health and safety issues the following question was asked by Minister Butler: 'Would you place a family member in St Brigid's for palliative or respite care?"'

Responding to the petition, a spokesman for Ms Butler told the Irish Examiner that the question, when posed, cited "substantive issues identified in a Hiqa report" on the hospital's suitability and the HSE's determination that "patient safety would be jeopardised and a degree of risk to human life would be posed" by allowing the centuries-old facility to remain in use for respite care.

Ms Butler praised the role St Brigid’s has "played for the past 183 years ... which is why I fought very hard to ensure that the hospital would not lie idle and underutilised but rather that it remained an asset to the local community and a detailed project plan has been developed as a result".

However, she added: "It would be wholly irresponsible of a minister to jeopardise patient safety, and potentially risk human life, by deviating from the decision taken by the HSE which, as previously, is unequivocally absolute and final."

Local Sinn Féin councillor David Dunne said there is an "added burden for carers" when attempting to access respite care for loved ones outside the HSE.

A spokesman for the HSE's South East Community Healthcare division said there is ongoing provision locally in south Tipperary for care beds and it is currently trying to fill the roles of an assistant director of public health nursing and diabetes specialists for St Brigid's.