This article is from page 3 of the 2006-06-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 3 JPG
THE late Taoiseach Charles Haughey had envisioned a different future for the acute health services in Clare, one that would no longer have Ennis General Hospital on its present site.
It emerged this week that as Minister for Health and Social Welfare from 1977 to 1979, Mr Haughey had discussed the possibility of relocating the county hospital to Cahercalla with senior politicians in Clare.
In fact, the controversial Taoiseach discussed plans to develop a medical campus on the site, then owned and run by the St John of God Order, which would include a maternity service and psychiatric services.
The Taoiseach visited the county to sanction the development of the maternity unit at Cahercalla. He had also wanted to close Our Lady’s Psychiatric Hospital on the Gort Road.
“He always felt this institution should be closed down,” said Fianna Fáil Senator Brendan Daly.
The west Clare senator, who served under Haughey as minister, said the man who would later become Taoiseach felt that Our Lady’s should never be considered for a general hospital, as he felt there would always be a stigma associated with the site.
During his visit to the county in the late seventies, Mr Haughey visited all three hospitals, Our Lady’s, Cahercalla and the County Hospital, now the Mid Western Regional Hospital Ennis.
Mr Haughey held a strong opinion that the general hospital should have been moved from its current location on the Gort Road.
In the late seventies, the mortuary in the county hospital was used for the majority of funerals and this led to congestion in the town.
Mr Haughey felt an out-of-town health campus would be ideal and felt the best place for such a development was in Cahercalla.
According to Senator Daly, Charles Haughey was also one of the first people to see the potential of a marina in Kilrush.
Himself a keen seaman, on passing the town dump in Kilrush he said to his party colleague, “wouldn’t that be ideal for a marina?”
In the run up to one of his many general elections, Charles Haughey’s mother Sarah was quoted as saying “Cathal always had notions.”
Some of the notions led the former Taoiseach to disgrace, some to changes for the country even Clare. Some remained merely as notions, as with the hospital.