Planning granted for new centre at Owenacurra mental health facility

Planning approval has been granted for a new centre on the grounds of the existing Owenacurra mental health facility in Midleton, a development hailed as a “milestone” in the locality.

Planning approval has been granted for a new centre on the grounds of the existing Owenacurra mental health facility in Midleton, a development hailed as a “milestone” in the locality.

Approval for the new 10-bed facility has been granted just two months after the initial application was lodged on December 20.

The fast-track approval comes as a major fillip to the Save Owenacurra campaign, which has battled for nearly three years for the preservation of a mental health service in east Cork for nearly three years.

The current Owenacurra centre itself has been vacant since being flooded during Storm Babet last October.

Hailing the planning approval, local Social Democrats councillor and prominent Owenacurra advocate Liam Quaide said the development is “a major milestone in the Owenacurra Centre campaign”.

Mr Quaide said that the campaign has “come a very long way from 2021 when the HSE's proposal at that stage was to remove all 24-hour staffed placements from East Cork and rely on isolated, institutional wards in Glanmire for this level of support”.

He said the new service will, along with two other facilities acquired by the HSE in the immediate area, “provide vital rehabilitation for people with the highest level of mental health need in East Cork far into the future".

The news means that, since HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster provided his personal assurance that a new facility would be built last November, the Owenacurra campaign has made as much measurable progress in three months as it had in the previous 29.

The facility was first marked for closure by the HSE in June of 2021, with the facility expected to close its doors to its 20 patients by the end of that October.

Instead, staunch opposition to the closure - among patients, their families and within the local community – saw the October date come and go with no movement towards a full closure.

Just six of the 20 patients of the facility, many of whom had lived there for decades, remain in situ at present. Those six are expected to be accommodated in the near future at two three-bed houses the HSE has procured in the Midleton area.