Cork councillor Liam Quaide to quit Green Party over Owenacurra closure

Cllr Liam Quaide: 'The Government has rubber-stamped a service closure that is transparently wrong.' Picture: Dan Linehan

Prominent East Cork county councillor Liam Quaide is to leave the Green Party with immediate effect, citing frustration with the party’s ministers over the closure of the Owenacurra mental health facility.

Mr Quaide has played a key role, together with his party colleague and TD for Dublin North Central Neasa Hourigan, in the campaign to reverse the HSE's decision to close Owenacurra.

The Midleton facility had been earmarked to close by the end of October 2021, but remains open to this day amid a concerted local campaign. The residents and their families have consistently challenged the HSE's argument that it is not cost-effective to refurbish the property.

In a resignation statement issued on Friday, Mr Quaide, who was first elected for the Midleton constituency at the 2019 local elections, said he had been “left frustrated by responses from ministerial party colleagues on the issue”.

“The Government has rubber-stamped a service closure that is transparently wrong,” he said. “The Government failed to intervene even as it became public knowledge that some residents were being moved from single-rooms in a town centre location to shared dorms in long-stay wards, cut off from their community,” Mr Quaide said.

“The HSE is meant to be accountable to the Government, but the Government is refusing to use its powers to challenge a decision that is causing serious harm to a very vulnerable group of people,” Mr Quaide said, adding that “on more electorally significant issues... the Government response has been very different”.

He said the Government’s “detachment” regarding Owenacurra, whose residents had for the most part been in place for decades, “reflects a broader trend of not looking after people suffering injustice”, including tenants facing homelessness and mother and baby home survivors being excluded from redress on an “arbitrary basis”.

Cllr Liam Quaide with Green Party TD Neasa Hourigan. Picture: Dan Linehan

Mr Quaide said he had “great respect for Green Party public representatives”, but said the country is “rightly up in arms” over the housing crisis.

“Too many people are being failed by Government policies,” he said. “This will cause social division, and alienate many people from the Green agenda.” 

Mr Quaide paid tribute to Ms Hourigan, who was recently suspended from the party for 15 months for voting against the Government’s decision to end the eviction ban.

Ms Hourigan was formally removed from her three Oireachtas committee assignments earlier this week, platforms she had frequently used to question officials from both the HSE and the Mental Health Commission regarding the Owenacurra closure, notably last December when she had accused the MHC of allowing its reports to be “weaponised” in order for the centre to be shut down.

Ms Hourigan, Mr Quaide said, had made “heroic efforts” on behalf of the Owenacurra campaign.

“She has, in fact, done much more for the people impacted by this closure than three out of four of our local TDs combined,” he said.

Mr Quaide said he would continue to serve as an independent councillor.