Clare hospital would create 600 jobs

PLANS FOR a private €60 million hospital that would create 600 jobs are to be lodged with Ennis Town Council in coming weeks.

This follows an An Bord Pleanála ruling that the application does not qualify as a strategic infrastructure development (SID) and the project will be adjudicated upon by local planners.

A private firm, Duesbury Ltd, is planning the 97-bed hospital within the 19th-century protected structure that housed the former Our Lady’s Psychiatric Hospital on the northern outskirts of Ennis.

A spokesman for Duesbury said the hospital would create 100 construction jobs and 600 jobs when operational.

He confirmed that the hospital would comprise of a “full care hospital providing all medical services and ancillary accommodation to include 97 full inpatient beds, also including 12 consultant suites with 30 first-strategy recovery cubicles and office accommodation”.

Hotelier Allen Flynn, builder Martin Fitzgibbon and Paul Talty purchased the site in October 2005 from Clare County Council for €5.2 million.

The three subsequently secured planning permission for a four-star hotel on the site.

However, the three have never advanced the hotel plan and through Duesbury are now seeking planning permission for the hospital.

The Duesbury spokesman confirmed: “A number of hospital investors/operator groups are in discussions with the owners of the site with regard to its future use.”

He said the plans are due to be lodged within the next eight weeks with the town council following the An Bord Pleanála decision.

Duesbury Ltd had referred the planning application to An Bord Pleanála for clarification to see if it would be considered strategic infrastructure.

However, in correspondence released by the appeals board, it shows that consultants on behalf of Duesbury, MH Associates, argued that the 97-bed hospital “is not of significant scale given it is essentially an extension to an existing hospital”.

The consultants argued that the plan was not a strategic infrastructure case. “We submit that the proposed development would not be of strategic economic/social importance to the State.

“While it is clear that there is a demand for such a proposal in the region, including private beds and that the proposal generally complies with the evolving Government policy on healthcare provision, there is a lacking of national guidance and policy on the provision of private hospitals of the scale proposed.”

In its decision the board inspector’s report stated that the hospital was below the 100 inpatient bed threshold and does not constitute strategic infrastructure.

The report recommended that having regard to the nature and scale of the proposed development, it was considered that it does not fall within the definition.

The expected lodging of the plans comes after plans for a €40 million private hospital on the western fringes of Ennis last year were refused planning permission by An Bord Pleanála.