Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I want to return to the Department. As the witness's feed cut out in the process of the response to my original question, I want to review the answer. We seem to have decided to close a centre of excellence in terms of Owenacurra, Midleton, a centre that is exemplary of fully-integrated 24-hour high-dependency beds in a local provision setting, which is exactly what we are meant to be aiming towards. In the period since the closure decision was made, no information has been provided on the building that is relevant to the closure. The building faces no more or no fewer challenges than most of the other healthcare provision facilities in the area. We have decided to move most of the 11 residents 30 km down the road into Carrigaline and Glenwood, at a cost of €1.25 million. We have no planning permission for that building.

I remind the witnesses that our national policy documents state that we should have in the region of 30 placements in every region. The area of east Cork had 24 placements in Owenacurra. It now has zero placements. By comparison, north Cork, which has almost the same population at 93,000 in 2016, has 42 placements. I understand there is a waiting list of local service users for those placements.

It is important to make the point that the HSE has cited a significant conflict of interest in its representations to this committee for this meeting. It states: "At a very early point, a potential conflict of interest was declared by a senior manager in the CHO mental health service as that person had a family connection to this property."