First homes on St Kevin's Hospital site to be delivered next year

The former St Kevin's Hospital will be the site of 265 housing units.

The first homes at the former St Kevin’s Hospital site on the Lee Road in Cork City are on track to be delivered next year, the Land Development Agency (LDA) has said.

The agency has been successful in a bid to Cork City Council to amend its planning permission for 265 units on the northside of the city, which will add a further two homes at the location.

Building works are said to be “progressing well” at the site, according to the LDA, with plans under way to commence phase 2 of the development.

Gutted by a fire in 2017, St Kevin’s Hospital in Sunday’s Well has long been earmarked for housing and planning permission was initially granted as far back as 2021.

Enabling works got under way at the almost six-acre site in late 2022, after being delayed due to bats breeding on the site. 

At the time, the LDA had said the first homes would be delivered in 2024.

However, this was put back a year and was revealed in an update last November. 

The slow delivery of this and other LDA housing projects was criticised at the time by Sinn Féin TD for Cork North-Central Thomas Gould, who said the “pace of this is unbelievable given we’re in the worst housing crisis this State has ever seen”.

In its amendment to the planning permission for the site, the LDA said that its new bid to Cork City Council was “substantially the same” as what had previously been approved.

“The changes to the scheme do not result in the loss of any residential units from the permitted development and includes the relocation of the creche to St Kevin’s Chapel which will help to secure this building into the future and allow members of the community to access this heritage asset,” it said.

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In planning documents, it said that initial phases of construction have secured the St Kevin’s building structurally after the fire and while the external parts of the church building are intact, the interiors are “significantly neglected internally”.

“Work on the St Kevin’s site is progressing well,” an LDA spokesperson said, 

“with enabling and stabilisation works to the main hospital building now complete.

“The contractor for Phase One (97 units) is currently on site, and the demolition and bulk earthworks have been completed. Substructure and superstructure work on the housing units is ongoing, with the first homes to be delivered in 2025.” 

The St Kevin's building has long been regarded as a landmark in Cork, with its famed red brick giving it a stand-out exterior. 

It was opened in 1899 as an extension of Our Lady’s Hospital. 

As a psychiatric hospital, it housed almost 500 patients and was in use up until 2002 after which it fell into dereliction and became a site of antisocial behaviour, vandalism, and arson.

In 2017, a blaze ripped through the building, destroying two-thirds of its interior.