HSE to close mental health facility in Skibbereen

It is believed that residents and staff of the facility were only told that the centre was set to close late last week

The Saol Nua facility in Skibbereen is set to close today, with the loss of up to four long-term residential places for people suffering with severe mental illness.

The HSE is set to close a West Cork residential mental health facility over staffing shortages, the Irish Examiner understands.

The Saol Nua facility in Skibbereen is set to close today, with the loss of up to four long-term residential places for people suffering with severe mental illness together with a respite service used by regular visitors to the centre.

The HSE has since said that the four residents of Saol Nua will be “temporarily moving” to Perrott House, with both residences situated on the site of Skibbereen Community Hospital.

They said that the closure had resulted from an “interim” decision “to temporarily redeploy staff rostered in Saol Nua” in order to facilitate the reopening of an acute mental health admissions unit in Bantry.

Social Democrats leader and TD for the area Holly Cairns, described the decision to close Saol Nua as devastating and that “there was a clear lack of regard given to patients by the HSE with this decision”.

Ms Cairns criticised the decision to give residents and staff less than a week’s notice that the centre was closing and for failing to notify local public representatives.

She said the scheduling of an opening ceremony for the centre for mental healthcare and recovery in Bantry yesterday bore the hallmarks of “a cynical public-relations campaign to withdraw vital services before public attention is drawn to the matter”.

Holly Cairns described the decision to close Saol Nua as devastating

Ms Cairns called for the decision to close Saol Nua to be reversed immediately, and for the HSE to concentrate its resources on the provision of “fully-staffed community residential services”.

Saol Nua is a single-storey self-catering residence on the grounds of the community hospital in Skibbereen, accommodating males and females, with the long-term residents generally older in age.

At the time of its most recent inspection by the Mental Health Commission in 2019 those being accommodated there had lived there for many years and were aged 57 to 73.

The same report noted that the residents frequently travel to Skibbereen to eat and shop and to make use of an open-door arts centre in the town.

The discontinuation of the service is the second closure of a long-term residential mental health facility in Co Cork since June 2021 when a similar service at Owenacurra in Midleton was controversially earmarked for closure.

Ms Cairns said the Saol Nua facility is “the exact kind of service we need to replicate in our health service, not shut down, where patients are connected to their community, and cared for 24/7 by staff who they have built trust and caring relationships with”.

She said the HSE’s policy for mental health services in Cork appears to diverge from community residential units towards a “centralisation” of such care, as evidenced by the “massive investment” in a 50-bed facility at St Stephen’s Hospital in Glanmire.

“While services like [St Stephen’s] are excellent for acute care, it is far too institutionalised a setting for continuing care and respite,” she said.

“Residents and service users would be isolated in a clinical setting, detached from their own communities and local supports”.

She added that a move towards centralised care “is completely against” both the HSE’s own

A Vision For Change

mental health policy framework and the United Nations convention on the rights of people with disabilities which states that those with the highest level of mental health needs have a right to live in the community.