Former Blarney hotel to be converted into community nursing home
Blarney Hotel and Golf resort near Tower, Co Cork. The HSE plan to convert the hotel to a nursing unit. Picture: Larry Cummins
A former hotel in Cork, which closed suddenly over a year ago, is to be converted into a community nursing unit.
The HSE confirmed today that it has taken responsibility for the former hotel building on the site of the Blarney hotel and golf resort site near Tower, on the north-western outskirts of Cork city, and that contractors moved on site to start its conversion into a 60-bed “Hiqa-compliant community nursing unit”.
Michael Fitzgerald, the chief officer of Cork Kerry Community Healthcare, said the new facility will allow the HSE to provide high-quality residential care for older people.
“Although our aim is to support people to live in their own homes for as long as possible, there is a recognised shortage of public nursing home beds in the Cork city area,” he said.
“This development will go some way to addressing that shortage, and will allow us to provide high-quality residential care for older people who need that care.
“We look forward to opening this new community nursing unit for the people of Cork as soon as possible.”
While the HSE said it plans to move ahead with the project as quickly as possible, it would be premature to give details of timelines at the moment.
“Significant works will be required to transform this former hotel into a HIQA-compliant community nursing unit,” a spokesperson said.
The hotel building closed in early January 2020 for what staff expected would be its regular seasonal closure. They expected the hotel to reopen in February.
But when it emerged that the owners had also ordered the immediate and indefinite closure of the resort’s leisure and gym complex, the 80-or-so staff expressed concerns for their jobs.
The golf course continued to operate as normal.
There have been several rumours about the hotel's future over the last 12-months or so, including that it was being considered as a direct provision centre and for local authority housing.
But the hotel went on the market earlier this year and has been taken over this week by the HSE.
The hotel, golf resort and 56-holiday homes were built about 16-years ago as part of a hugely ambitious €30m hospitality venture on the 170-acre site in the Shournagh valley.
The golf course was designed by two-time major winner, US golfing legend John Daly, his first foray into golf course design in Europe. The course opened in 2006.
The company which developed it subsequently went into liquidation and the hotel was bought and sold several times in the intervening years.
A planning application lodged with Cork City Council last summer by a company called Serdang for permission for a change of use of its existing 56-holiday cottages on the site to private residential dwellings was refused on six grounds.
Planners said given its remote location and its overall planning history for tourist-related development, its design and scale for short-term holiday accommodation, lack of housing mix, and its car-based dependency, would be contrary to the overall policy around providing sustainable integrated neighbourhoods.
The planners said that the creation of a permanent residential development at this location in the absence of convenient cyclist and pedestrian links to nearby Tower village, and to high-frequency public transportation, would represent an “unco-ordinated haphazard form of development” which would give rise to an isolated piecemeal pockets of residential development that is disconnected from shops amenities and residential services.
They also expressed concern that the development would endanger public safety through the extra traffic it would generate onto a poor rural road network, and because the roads nearby do not have any footpaths or public lighting closing to facilitate the pedestrian traffic the proposed development would generate
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