Mr. Mark Kane:

I thank Mr. Fitzgerald. As the Deputy is aware, the community nursing unit on the grounds of Midleton Community Hospital is part of a national programme that will deliver seven community nursing units. That national tender negotiation is currently well advanced. We expect to see the start of the 50-bed community nursing unit in summer 2021. That offers a great opportunity in terms of the ongoing reimagining of the Midleton Community Hospital campus.

We have what are locally known as the front hospital and back hospital buildings. To go back to a point made by Deputy Durkan in respect of the HSE and the repurposing of existing buildings, we envisage an absolute repurposing of the front hospital and back hospital when we have the new community nursing unit developed. We will certainly see those buildings offering a fantastic opportunity for primary care services to be enhanced in east Cork. That feeds into the fact that, when it comes to every primary care centre we do now, we work very closely with community mental health services. We see that offering a great opportunity for consolidating the community mental health teams. We will also have the ongoing enhanced community care programme and will consider how that will be rolled out and the opportunities arising from the fact we now have buildings that we will repurpose for the likes of responding to chronic disease-type issues in the east Cork area. This community nursing unit is a great opportunity and we will be noting the comments of Deputy Durkan in respect of reimagining and repurposing those existing buildings from a primary care community mental health perspective.