HSE spends €1.1m on Cork mental health facility while waiting for replacement

People march in a public demonstration to protest against the proposed closure of the Owenacurra Mental Health facility in Midleton last year. Picture: David Keane

The HSE has spent €1.1m renting and cleaning a Co Cork mental health facility while waiting 18 months for a replacement centre to become operational.

Since April 2020, the executive has spent €43,000 per month renting and cleaning a facility at Garnish House in Cork city while hosting patients intended to be accommodated there at a newly purchased centre at Glenwood House in Carrigaline.

New documents released under freedom of information show the HSE had initially planned to vacate Garnish House at the end of January 2021 in order to move its residents to the new facility at Glenwood.

In September of 2020, the documents show that a HSE assistant national director of estates expressed a desire to acquire Glenwood House in order to end the health service’s dependency on Garnish House, which, he said, “isn’t economically sustainable”.

Correspondence between HSE South estate managers showed that a contract for the purchase of Glenwood needed to be signed “as a matter of urgency” in November 2020.

As of this month, Glenwood, which the HSE acquired in January of 2021 and which has cost the State €1.25m to date in purchase and upgrade fees, has received no planning permission for conversion to use as a mental health facility and remains vacant.

The HSE has said it expects to open the property by the end of June 2022 at the earliest.

Green Party councillor, Liam Quaide, said the new information regarding the money spent on Glenwood and Garnish House is “staggering”.

It is all the more remarkable when you consider that after spending €1.1m on Garnish House, the HSE will not retain it as an asset.

"And Glenwood has yet to receive planning permission as a mental health facility," Mr Quaide said.

The purchase of the Carrigaline property was subject to a potential conflict of interest — it was bought from the immediate family of a senior HSE manager — something the HSE said it had been aware of “at a very early point”.

The €2.3m spent on Glenwood and Garnish over the past two years contrasts with a €145,000 tender for the refurbishment of the State-owned Owenacurra mental health residential facility in Midleton in 2020, which was never actioned.

Owenacurra has been set for closure since last September due to it being “regrettably no longer fit for purpose”, according to HSE chief Paul Reid, despite the strenuous objections of residents — many of whom have been living there for decades — and their families. 

When it closes it will leave east Cork, a catchment population of 94,000 people, with no dedicated 24-hour mental health facility of its own.

Nine of Owenacurra’s remaining residents have been offered accommodation at Glenwood House, 30 kilometres away, when it opens. 

Glenwood has a capacity of 14 rooms. It is unclear how many residents from Garnish House are proposed to move to Glenwood, which was originally purchased to accommodate those patients solely.