Owenacurra mental health facility to remain closed after recent floods in Midleton

Owenacurra, which opened in 1988, has been the subject of an extended stay of execution since the HSE announced it would be closing the facility in June of 2021—an unexpected development which led to a fierce backlash in the locality and a determined campaign to preserve the service.

Since that time 14 of the then 20 residents of the centre have been transferred to other accommodation, while campaigners had repeatedly called for the closure to be reversed, citing the perceived inadequacies of the reasons given for its necessity—including that the building was allegedly no longer fit for purpose.

Writing to the residents and their families earlier this month Julie O’Neill, the HSE’s interim head of mental health services for the Cork/Kerry region, said she knew that it had been a “worrying time” for all concerned since the flooding which devastated Midleton as a whole causing more than €150m worth of damage.

Alternative accommodation

She noted that Owenacurra’s staff complement has been “providing excellent support, communication and continuity of care” to the residents within the confines of the Midleton Park Hotel, ever since the flooding.

Ms O’Neill said that the refurbishment of a three-bed property, purchased at Lauriston in the town to accommodate some of Owenacurra’s residents, is now “nearing completion”.

She did not mention a second three-bed property in the area which the HSE has also committed to purchasing in order to accommodate the remaining three residents.

A spokesperson for the HSE said that it is seeking “interim accommodation” for the Owenacurra residents, adding that “in the meantime, we are satisfied with the location and quality of the alternative accommodation”.

“The residents are comfortable, safe and being well cared for by their familiar support staff,” they said, adding that both of the aforementioned three-bed homes in Midleton will be available “in the coming months, and we look forward to opening them as soon as possible”.

The spokesperson did acknowledge however that the second property has not actually been purchased as yet, but said that the sale “is progressing”.

Local councillor and one of the mainstays of the campaign to save Owenacurra, Liam Quaide, said that it is “sad” to hear that the centre will now not re-open.

“I've been informed that the remaining residents are being very well looked after in hotel accommodation,” he said, adding that it is now “vital that the HSE follows through on its commitments to the second property purchase and the new build 10-bed facility in Midleton”.

TIMELINE

Owenacurra was first set up in 1988 as a means of aiding the relocation of 35 long-stay residents of Our Lady’s Hospital in Cork to a community setting.

Eventually, it would provide long-term rehabilitation and short-term respite for the population of east Cork, a catchment area of more than 90,000 people.

Its reviews in recent years by the Mental Health Commission (MHC), in all matters bar those of the infrastructural standards of the facilities themselves, were consistently above average, while relatives of the once-20-strong population of the centre, most of them long-term residents, have said on many occasions that the quality of care given at Owenacurra had saved and enabled their loved ones’ lives.

But from May 2019, the writing was on the wall for the Midleton facility. 

That month, the general manager of Cork-Kerry Healthcare Kevin Morrison and head of services for the region Sinead Glennon discussed the potential sale of Owenacurra in a meeting with the HSE’s estates function. The work needed to bring the building up to code is estimated at a maximum of €300,000.

The HSE subsequently denies that there had ever been a commercial dimension to the eventual decision to close the centre.

That closure was announced in June of 2021, to the shock of the long-term residents of the facility and their families. Kevin Morrison, by now the acting head of mental health services for the region, informs residents in a letter of the reasons the centre is to close by October 31, 2021: that building defects and the fact the standards of the MHC are allegedly not being met (in fact, some residents ended up being moved to facilities with far worse compliance reports than Owenacurra) have rendered the centre’s prolonged existence untenable.

Owenacurra “must close because the current building is not suitable and cannot be brought to the standard needed and that you deserve”, Morrison says.

The announcement, which had been utterly unexpected, provokes an outcry in the locality where Owenacurra’s residents have mixed freely with the community for years and galavanises a protest movement which renders the HSE’s planned closure date moot almost from the very beginning.

It emerges long after the fact, in documents released to local councillor Liam Quaide and Green TD Neasa Hourigan via freedom of information, that the HSE’s initial plan as of July 2021 had been to move as many of Owenacurra’s residents as possible to long-stay wards in St Stephen’s Hospital in Glanmire — an isolated dormitory-style setting far from Midleton, and that even an old age facility at Mount Alvernia, 40 miles from Owenacurra, had been considered.

A briefing for the Oireachtas health committee in December 2021 sees the executive clinical director for Cork/Kerry Dr Sinead O’Brien deny this fact however, stating that St Stephen’s was “not actually being suggested as a suitable location”.

At the same meeting, the proposed closure — by now two months over its own schedule — is sharply criticised by senators and TDs. The HSE claims that the closure of Owenacurra corresponds with the HSE’s own mental health strategy ‘A Vision for Change’. The same officials acknowledge that no replacement staffed facilities are planned for east Cork.

In April of 2022, the same health committee — following member visits to both St Stephen’s and Owenacurra and lengthy consideration of the various infrastructure reports relating to the latter — calls for the decision to close Owenacurra to be reversed. Minister of State for Mental Health Mary Butler declines to grant the request, citing it as an operational matter for the HSE.

In May, under a constant barrage of pressure in terms of parliamentary questions, FOI requests and further Oireachtas hearings, the HSE says it will build a 10-person service in Midleton to replace Owenacurra, with a development team to be convened to that end.

The summer of 2022 sees chair of the HSE board Ciaran Devane, in response to calls from the health committee to reconsider the closure, double down on same. During the Oireachtas recess family members note a renewed energy to the HSE’s offers of alternative accommodation — at St Stephen’s, St Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork city, and a rental at Garnish House also in the city among others — to Owenacurra residents. Some residents do move. A core of long-stay patients, predominantly those with firm familial supports, decline all offers.

In November, the health committee again calls for the closure to be reversed by the HSE board, citing its “grave” concerns about the move and the fact the proposed transfer destinations “represent significant downgrades” on Owenacurra.

In December the Mental Health Commission appears at the Oireachtas Disability Committee, and attempts to preclude being questioned about Owenacurra. It fails and the MHC’s role in the potential closure of Owenaccura is called into question.

In March of 2023 chief officer for Cork/Kerry Michael Fitzgerald, one of the three managers to first approve the Owenacurra closure along with Kevin Morrison and head of services Hugh Scully, retires. Both Morrison and Scully have since also moved to alternative positions within the HSE.

The HSE now announces it has purchased a three-bed house for Owenacurra’s residents, of whom six of the original 20 now remain, at Lauriston in the town.

Two months later it emerges that the development team intended to oversee the construction of a new 10-bed facility in Midleton has never been convened, a year after that intention was first announced. The same month, the Irish Examiner revealed that some members of the HSE’s national Safety and Quality Committee are of the opinion that the Owenacurra closure likely contravenes the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities — given the residents’ new placements are located far from their community.

New HSE CEO and former head of Tusla Bernard Gloster (pictured left), who succeeds Paul Reid in the role in March, meets with Hourigan and Quaide who raise the perceived injustice of the closure on pretexts that did not stand up to scrutiny. Gloster commits to visiting Owenacura to see it for himself.

In October 2023, two years after the closure was initially planned to take place, Owenacurra is flooded, along with much of Midleton. The six residents are moved to the Midleton Park Hotel, where they remain.

The following month, Gloster commits to engaging personally with the Department of Health to ensure both that funding is secured for the new Midleton facility, but also that it be built on the existing site. He also says that the HSE is close to securing a second three-bed residence for the remaining Owenacurra residents. That news means that HSE has gone from committing to zero 24-hour staffed placements in east Cork to committing to 16 such placements.

Gloster notes in his letter to the Oireachtas that the closure has been “the subject of some significant debate and publicity”.

In December 2023 those same residents are informed that the centre where most of them have lived for decades has been rendered uninhabitable by the flood, and it will never again function as a residential facility.

Some 30 months after Owenacurra’s closure was first announced, it remains unclear when its final residents will move to their new homes, and what services will be available to them when there.