After 11 months, Midleton still waits for team promised to establish mental health unit

With the proposed closure of the Owenacurra mental health facility in Midleton, which remains open with just six residents accommodated, some 18 months after it was supposed to shut its doors, east Cork will have no such facility.

A ‘development team’ to establish a new 10-person mental health unit in Midleton, Co. Cork, has yet to be formed, 11 months after it was promised by the HSE. 

In May 2022, the then chief officer for Cork/Kerry HSE Michael Fitzgerald wrote to local Cork TDs regarding the proposed “modernisation” of mental health services in east Cork, and promised to “provide a new 10-bed rehabilitative residential unit in Midleton town”, which would incorporate 24-hour staffing with a focus on supporting people “to return to their homes and communities”.

Mr Fitzgerald, who retired at the end of last month, added that a development team would be appointed in order to “conduct an options appraisal, and engage with people using mental health services in the area”.

The HSE has now admitted that the team has yet to be set up, and will not be constituted before HSE Cork/Kerry receives “capital approval for the unit”.

A Freedom of Information request submitted by local councillor Liam Quaide to the HSE requesting records of all communications, meeting minutes, and other documents for the development team returned no information whatsoever, indicating that the plans were never officially recorded. 

A HSE spokesperson said plans for the new residential unit are “moving ahead” and that tender documentation for the design stage will appear online via the electronic tenders portal “very shortly”. “Once the design team is appointed, an appraisal of possible sites will take place,” the spokesperson said.

A query, meanwhile, was not directly responded to on why the development team has not been set up some 11 months after it was first mooted. Mr Quaide said the HSE’s commitment to building the new unit “has not been backed up by action”.

Under the HSE’s own ‘Vision for Change’ mental health policy, community residential units totalling 30 places should be provided for recovery and rehabilitation mental health services per 100,000 people.

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With the proposed closure of the Owenacurra mental health facility in Midleton, which remains open with just six residents accommodated, some 18 months after it was supposed to shut its doors, east Cork will have no such facility.

Of the Owenacurra closure, Mr Quaide said: “Dismantling a vital support structure for people with high dependency needs and not even having a site identified for a replacement service, or capital funding secured for its construction at this stage, represents a serious failing of this vulnerable client group.” 

He said, in reference to the promised 10-bed residential unit, that “there should be interim accommodation made available locally if this facility is actually being built”.

Separately, Mr Fitzgerald had also committed last May to provide “at least one community residence in Midleton town, for three or four residents”. It emerged last month that the HSE is to spend €814,000 on accommodating three residents of Owenacurra in a refurbished house in the Lauriston area of Midleton, which is prone to flooding.

Asked at the time whether such a location would tally with the Government’s climate action requirements — one of the reasons cited for the closure of Owenacurra in the first place — a HSE manager said that “the risk of flooding in the particular location is outweighed by the suitability of the building’s location for the purposes of providing convenient access to the town’s facilities”.