New rehabilitation hospital earmarked for Cork docklands in development plan

French care giant in plan to develop private rehabilitation hospital with riverside views

The proposed hospital will be at the junction with Victoria Road. Picture: Flythrough

THE only hospital dedicated to rehabilitation outside of Dublin is earmarked for Cork City, as part of a prodigiously ambitious €350m plan to develop the South Docks.

The 122,000 sq ft 130-bed rehabilitation hospital will provide rehab for patients with stroke and acquired brain injury, as well as general neurological rehabilitation, and will be among the most modern in Europe, according to developers O’Callaghan Properties (OCP).

The new hospital, earmarked for a triangular-shaped wedge at the city end of Kennedy Quay, opposite the Idle Hour pub, will have 130 individual patient rooms, all with a riverside view, and comprehensive therapy and rehabilitative facilities, including a gymnasium, an occupational therapy suite and a hydrotherapy pool.

A dedicated outpatient day hospital and restaurant and café services are also part of the plan.

OCP is hoping to begin construction work on the hospital in the first quarter of 2023, subject to planning approval.

The rehabilitation hospital will provide rehab for patients with stroke and acquired brain injury, as well as general neurological rehabilitation. Pictures: Flythrough

The cost of the hospital is not clear, with the information deemed “commercially sensitive” by OCP.

The development is a significant one for the city, which had in the past been earmarked for a southern rehabilitation centre, to offset the pressures on the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire, in Dublin, where waiting times for admission to some programmes are four to five months.

More than a decade ago, the former St Mary’s Orthopaedic Hospital in Gurranabraher was under consideration as a location for a regional unit, but nothing transpired.

Politicians such as former Labour TD Kathleen Lynch repeatedly raised the issue of patients having to travel to Dublin in the absence of regional rehabilitation units.

The cost of the hospital is not clear, with the information deemed “commercially sensitive” by OCP.

The new hospital will be operated by French care giant the Orpea Group, currently the largest private nursing home operator in Ireland, and the world’s biggest publicly traded nursing home group by revenue, with revenues of €3.9bn in 2020.

Commenting on the group’s plans for Cork, Emmanuel Masson, Orpea’s executive vice president of expansion and network development, said they were “really pleased to be involved in this exciting development of Cork’s South Docks area”.

“We believe the riverside location of the hospital will be a great advantage to patients and the staff who will work there.

“In fact, the design of the hospital is configured so that each of the patient’s rooms will have a river view which will underpin the positive healing environment we seek to create in each of our facilities,” he said.

A view of the former Odlums building and R&H Hall building on Kennedy Quay, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

The Orpea Group entered the Irish market in 2020, buying the TLC Nursing Home portfolio for €150 million. It subsequently bought the Brindley Healthcare care home group and in May this year, reached agreement to buy the FirstCare collection of nursing homes from businessman Mervyn Smith in a deal understood to be worth more than €100 million, making it the largest private player in the sector in the State.

It now has in the region of 2,000 beds in Ireland and circa 112,000 beds in total across 22 countries.

Former health minister Mary Harney, who was on the board of Brindley, is reported to have since joined the board of Orpea Care Ireland Ltd, as well as former VHI chief John O’Dwyer. Neal McGroarty, formerly the chief financial officer at Brindley Healthcare, is the CEO.

During her time as health minister, Ms Harney championed a plan to co-locate public and private hospitals, which was subsequently shelved.

It’s not clear yet who the new hospital will treat - whether public patients will have access as well as those with private health insurance. The group’s website refers to private hospitals only, but in the absence of a public service in the region, the HSE may look at entering into an arrangement down the line, with a precedent already set under schemes such as the National Treatment Purchase Fund, and more recently, a high level of co-operation between public and private facilities under pandemic arrangements.

The level of complexity of care the new hospital will provide is also unclear, such as whether it will match the type of programmes on offer at the NRH where extremely specialised complex care is available to patients with traumatic and non-traumatic brain injury, stroke, spinal cord injury and other neurological conditions.