Rocksboroproject getsthegreenlight

January 1987

A treatment centre for alcoholics at Rocksboro outside Wexford town has been granted planning permission by Wexford County Council, despite objections by local residents.

Co. Manager, Noel Dillon, has given the goahead to the Co. Tippeary-based organisation, Aiseirí, to establish a centre for alcoholics and drug addicts in the luxury house formerly owned by businessman, Victor Stafford.

His decision follows objections from residents who fear that patients using the centre will cause a disturbance in the area.

The Council received ‘quite a number’ of official objections, according to senior planning officer, Ross Nixon.

‘ They were mostly concerned with risk of disturbance to older residents and children,’ she said.

But Aiseirí, run by Sr. Eileen Fahy, has given assurances that only alcoholics and drug addicts who have undergone drying out and detoxification programmes will be admitted to the centre.

‘ The information we received was quite reassuring,’ added Ms. Nixon.

‘And planning permission has been given on condition that the centre is run in accordance with this information.’

The organisation’s Wexford project is being aided by the South-Eastern Health Board, which bought the £120,000 house on their behalf.

Assisting in the setting up of the centre will be a husband and wife team of American addiction counsellors who have been commissioned by Aiseirí on a two-year secondment from the United States.

Persistent objectors may now lodge an appeal with An Bórd Pleanála, however, but a determined Sr. Eileen has said she is not prepared to wait around for a final decision.

Aiseirí has been invited to establish a treatment centre in Cork and she is prepared to drop plans for a Wexford project and go there instead, if local co-operation is not forthcoming, she said.