Details for the delivery of seven Community Nursing Units to be provided through a public private partnership reveal that work is to start on a fifty bed facility in Clonmel before Christmas. The others are planned for Ardee, Athlone, Killarney, Middleton, Cork City and Thomastown in Kilkenny – a total of 530 beds will be provided with a mix of short and long stay beds.
Each CNU is made up of a number of 25-bed households including single and twin bedrooms en-suite, a dayroom, dining area, activity spaces, quiet rooms, a family overnight stay room and clinical treatment rooms, physiotherapy and occupational therapy rooms and hairdressers’ rooms.
Equisisk has been appointed to design, build, finance and maintain the CNU facilities for a 25-year period before handing back the facilities to the HSE for an annual fee of €24M. All patient care services will be provided by the HSE. It is calculated that this model saves the state €79M compared to the traditional procurement methods with the seven units costing €521M to deliver. The project is being funded by Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (Nord LB), Bank of Ireland and the European Investment Bank
