Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the children and teachers of Our Lady of Lourdes national school in Ballinlough who are in the Visitors Gallery. It is pure coincidence that I happen to be in Chamber at this time. It is appropriate that the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs is also here to welcome them.

This important issue involves the Bessborough Centre, previously the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home. That was controversial in itself, but I am not dealing with that aspect today. The trustees of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary have decided to sell the land. On that land are vital family services for vulnerable families and children. What has developed there over recent years is an extraordinarily high quality intervention service funded by Tusla on a current basis. The family assessment and treatment services include a parent and infant residential unit. It is an 11-bed facility that provides a continuum of assessment and parenting capacity building, a therapeutic intervention for high risk parent-infant families.

The parenting capacity provision is very significant, as is the acute residential unit, as has been well recognised. Post discharge, the Lime Tree project comprises community-based family support service and supervised access service. That is exclusively commissioned for families involved in the South Lee social work department. There is a very extensive community crèche and preschool with Pobal subvention. I understand the nuns wish to sell this as a going concern. This has a capacity of 139 with a staff team of 34, including an administrative manager and childcare manager.

There is a secondary school for second-chance education provided by the education and training board to some of the mothers who avail of this facility. Vulnerable adult students are intensively supported to achieve a leaving certificate to enter further education or vocational opportunities. That school works in harmony with all other Bessborough services, particularly providing parents opportunities to consolidate positive life change whilst using clinical family services. The centre's ethos of inclusion and unconditional respect engages pupils typically resistant to formal education or statutory involvement. There are comprehensive employment support services on the Bessborough lands, again facilitating vocational training and experiences for individuals to return to the workplace or seek employment. That is critical in facilitating the therapeutic and trauma-informed physical environment of the Bessborough centres. There are tremendous synergies between all these different strands of provision. On the wider campus, Eist Linn, an inpatient mental health facility operated by the HSE, is also on these lands. An 11-year lease is left on that facility and €2 million extra capital investment has been added to the premises in recent years.

In one parliamentary answer, the Minister said she had no role to play in intervening in the sale. I put it to her straight that the Government should buy it on behalf of the people. The Minister should work with other Ministers - Health, Education and Skills, and Housing, Planning and Local Government - along with the local city council and combine to buy this entire facility. A master plan could be developed for its extensive lands, which would add to its existing synergies. The sod was turned for the event centre in Cork four years ago and nothing has happened. The developer said he could not complete the project for €10 million or whatever, and I reckon €20 million is now going into it. Why is it that the most vulnerable and most needy of families and children are always at the bottom of the queue? There is a real danger that these services will dissipate as a result of this sale.

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