'The Sherlock Wing' proposal to go before council committee

There was no discussion held and barely a mention made at all, of a motion to ask the HSE to name the extension of Mallow General Hospital ‘The Sherlock Wing’ at Monday’s Cork County Council meeting. This is despite the fact that the same motion resulted in a protracted and spirited discussion at the previous meeting, when very few councillors in the chamber supported the proposal at all. The naming was intended to memorialise the late Joe Sherlock, as well as referencing his son Séan, sitting TD for Cork East who have been advocates for the hospital down through the years.

Proposed by Labour Cllr Eoghan Kenny in late March, the matter had been deferred to this week after government- party politicians from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil refused to definitively support the proposal. They had called for any memorial to the late Joe Sherlock to instead be made ‘in-house’ and confined to a piece of Cork County Council infrastructure like a bridge, rather than leaving it in the hands of the HSE who would have the final say of what the new wing at Mallow General Hospital would be called.

Instead of writing to the HSE, the suggestion to name the 48-bed hospital extension ‘ The Sherlock Wing’ has instead been brought to Cork County Council’s Social Inclusion Strategic Policy Committee (SPC).

Speaking this week, Cllr Kenny said he was very disappointed in this move, calling it a ‘backwards step’. Denying it was an attempt to score political points, he claimed that the suggestion had been widely supported by ‘the whole of the Mallow community’.

“This is a backwards step, for a motion that was very clear. It was a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, but it was complicated by the two larger parties. This amendment was made by Fine Gael and supported by Fianna Fáil. This was never a motion for political points scoring, it was a genuine motion that has been widely supported by the whole of the Mallow community. I’ve been out on the doors over the last number of weeks and the people of Mallow are fully behind it”.

The fact that it's before a committee does not mean that the idea is a dead-duck, however Cllr Kenny criticised his fellow Mallow district councillors, particularly, for this stalling.

“I am very disappointed with my fellow councillors in Mallow who point blankly refused to support my motion, instead agreeing with the amendment to bring it to the committee. I will attend the meeting of the SPC and I will fight the case that Joe Sherlock should be remembered and honoured for the Trojan work he did to upgrade and retain Mallow hospital”.