More staff and beds at Kenmare Community Hospital... finally

SEVEN years after Kenmare Community Hospital first opened its doors, good news has been announced for the local hospital with the opening of an additional nine beds at the 40-bed unit.

However, while this news has been welcomed, there remains more unfilled capacity at Kenmare Community Hospital. A campaign been running for seven years for the full 40 beds to be opened at the facility.

The €8m Kenmare Community Hospital unit opened to much fanfare in June 2013. Seven years later it is still not fully operational.

This week the HSE have confirmed that nine beds are to be opened. Approximately 20 beds had been lying idle at the hospital but this has been significantly reduced with the opening of some of the remaining beds.

Three of these beds are to be filled in the coming days and the remainder in the coming weeks to increase the hospital’s capacity by nine.

The hospital had been used for Covid patient recovery during the Covid-19 crisis.

The delay in opening beds at the unit was the difficulty in recruiting staff, according to the HSE and this week Kerry Cork Community Health-care confirmed that additional staff have been recruited.

“Cork Kerry Community Healthcare is happy to confirm that we can increase the capacity at Kenmare Community Hospital from this week. A number of admissions to the community hospital will take place over the coming weeks, to a maximum of nine further residents thanks to this increased capacity,” they said in a statement.

Deputy Michael Healy-Rae has welcomed the news and said he is ‘tremendously sorry’ that it was such a long saga to get the beds open. He said the Kenmare Community Hospital provides a wonderful service to the community.

He added that he will fight for the remaining beds to be open and has already raised the issue with the new health minister Stephen Donnelly.

The opening of any further capacity is dependent on the successful recruitment of nursing staff, the HSE said.