St Bridget's Nursing Home – Crooksling Update

To ask the Minister for Health the extent to which the currently available beds and facilities at St. Brigid’s Nursing Home, Crooksling, County Dublin, are to be replaced by similar community based facilities at the new unit in Inchicore; the extent of fitting out costs; if such costs have been fully determined and provided for; if extra costs have been or are likely to be incurred in the course of transition and follow up; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

Bernard J. Durkan

Ref: 38684/12

REPLY:

The Health Service Executive has been requested to reply directly to you in the context of the above Parliamentary Question, which you submitted to the Minister for Health and Children for response.  

St. Brigid’s Hospital, Crooksling is currently registered with HIQA to accommodate 66 patients and, where vacancies arise new patients will be admitted to maintain the overall number of patients at that level.   Respite services will continue to be provided at St. Brigid’s within that overall figure of 66 patients.

The new community nursing unit at Inchicore will include 50 beds. These beds will be additional capacity in the system and will be targeted at high dependency patients who require long term care.

Due to the staffing restrictions within the public service it is intended to explore the possibility of using a public private partnership model to open this unit.   This model has been used successfully to open the Ballincollig Community Nursing Unit in Cork and has delivered real benefits to the system in terms of additional capacity at a cost lower than the cost of the HSE operating the unit directly.

Any additional costs in relation to the opening of the Inchicore Unit would be subject to the terms of the contractual arrangement between the HSE and the provider if the public private partnership model is used.

However, it is considered unlikely that the HSE would incur significant additional start up or fit out costs in those circumstances.