Patients not ‘coerced’ to leave Midleton facility, HSE says

The HSE also confirmed that a new-build 10-bed mental health facility for Midleton will be built on the Owenacurra site itself

Owenacurra was slated for closure by the HSE in June of 2021, citing the perceived poor standard of the 1970s-era building as a primary reason. Picture: Howard Crowdy

The HSE has denied that residents of the Owenacurra mental health facility in Midleton were “coerced” into leaving the facility despite having to move against their wishes.

At a meeting of the Oireachtas petitions committee to discuss the closing of vital services in three counties, the chair of the committee, Martin Browne, suggested to the HSE’s witnesses that given the 14 residents who have left Owenacurra to date did so “contrary to their express wishes”, that the matter amounted to “coercion any way you look at it”.

The new chief officer for Cork/Kerry Tess O’Donovan, however, said: “It behoves all of us to ensure that there isn’t even a semblance or a discussion around coercion.”

Separately, at the committee the HSE confirmed for the first time that a new-build 10-bed mental health facility for Midleton will be built on the Owenacurra site itself, though no updated timelines for its delivery, which has previously been deemed as “ambitious” by Owenacurra campaigners, are currently available.

Regarding the Mr Browne’s assertion that Owenacurra’s residents had been moved against their will, Neasa Hourigan, Green TD and a prominent advocate for Owenacurra’s cause, said she had met the residents of the centre personally and “they said they don’t want to lose their home, where they’ve been living for seven, eight, 15 years”.

“We try and agree where possible where suitable care can be provided,” Ms O’Donovan said.

We have people in beds who are out of the area and that’s a difficulty, but there are care needs in some cases, and there is no coercion, and we can’t coerce patients.

She denied that the HSE had moved patients against their will.

“That is not happening,” she said. “We may not be able to get a first preference for an individual, but we are working with the families and with the patients to try and work through that.” 

“The model of care is changing,” Joe Ryan, the HSE’s national director for operational performance and integration, told the committee. “We’re trying to move as much services as we can to delivering in people’s homes.” 

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Mr Browne disputed this statement, however, and said that what the HSE had done in the cases under consideration was “not moving people back to care in their homes, it’s moving people further away from their families”.

Owenacurra was slated for closure by the HSE in June of 2021, citing the perceived poor standard of the 1970s-era building as a primary reason.

The announcement led to a concerted resistance movement among families of residents and the local community, who questioned the validity of the HSE’s reasoning given other mental health facilities in Cork had consistently received worse compliance ratings than Owenacurra from the Mental Health Commission, yet had never been perceived as unviable.