Residential ‘pods’ to be built next to mental health site in Cork

The HSE has received planning permission to build on the site of Millfield House in Blackpool

A HSE spokesperson said the planning application 'allows us to consider all possible options in relation to Millfield House'.

The HSE has received planning permission to build a series of residential ‘pods’ next to the site of a disused mental health facility in Cork City.

Cork City Council approved the application to build the four independent single-storey pods along with associated works on the site of Millfield House on the Commons Rd in Blackpool earlier this month.

It is unclear how many people the pods are set to accommodate, nor when they are due for completion.

A HSE spokesperson said the planning application “allows us to consider all possible options in relation to Millfield House”.

“No definite or immediate plans are in place for the placing or use of pods,” they said. It has emerged Millfield House is to be repopulated with some former residents from the end of May.

However, the main building will now accommodate just five people, not the 15 it had done prior to 2020.

Earlier this month, the Irish Examiner reported that the HSE had spent just under €900,000 providing private security over the past four years for Millfield, a building it had valued at just €630,000 in 2020 when the site was being earmarked for sale.

Millfield has been empty since April of 2020 when its vulnerable residents — many of whom had lived there for years — were moved to the rented Garnish House in Cork city, where they have remained ever since, on foot of social distancing concerns during the covid-19 pandemic, which was then at its height.

At the time, some of the residents’ families criticised the move and the lack of information about future plans for the residents and for Millfield.

It is believed that the plan to move the former residents back to Millfield will see the remaining nine, who will not be living in the main building, accommodated instead in the new ‘pod’ residences.

Changed plans

The news means that the HSE’s plans to replace Millfield with accommodation at a former B&B in Carrigaline, as noted in the executive’s 2021 capital plan, have now changed fundamentally.

That property, Glenwood House, was bought in January 2021 for €750,000, and has since had a further €500,000 spent on its refurbishment.

It has yet to open its doors more than two years later, however, and is awaiting a retention planning permission decision from An Bord Pleanála to allow it to be used as a mental health facility.

The security detail in place at Millfield has cost the HSE €897,843 since May of 2019.

It was originally put in place as a result of “anti-social behaviour and a large fire” in the unit across from the building, according to the HSE.

The HSE has been under pressure to give up the tenancy of Garnish House, which as of last September had cost it €1.7m on rental and cleaning costs.

While the HSE’s former chief officer for Cork/Kerry Michael Fitzgerald told an Oireachtas committee last year that its residents would be vacated from the rental by the end of March 2023, it is now expected that the tenancy will be maintained until at least the end of 2023.

Mr Fitzgerald took retirement with immediate effect at the end of last month.