Primary Care passes first planning hurdle

The long-awaited €20 million Community Primary Care centre in Clonbrusk jumped the first planning hurdle on Friday last garnering approval from Westmeath County Council. Although good news for the HSE, it still remains unclear when work will actually begin on the long -waited piece of health infrastructure in Athlone, a saga now stretching over a decade. A Health Service Executive statement last week confirmed that monies are in place to complete design work on the project in 2009, but further approval of funding from the Department will be needed to go to tender. Subject to compliance with 39 separate planning conditions, the local authority approved the plans last Friday for a part three and four-storey building to be split in two blocks separated by a glazed atrium adjacent to the recently opened Disability Resource Centre in Clonbrusk. 'The centre will bring together under one roof, treatment, care and information services which, to date, are provided from a number of buildings scattered across Athlone,' the planning application states. In the statement to the Westmeath Independent last week, the Health Service Executive confirmed the current figure (for Clonbrusk) in the capital plan is €19.96m, however, approved expenditure for 2009 is only €0.750m. It went on to say that approval was conveyed to progress the design of the project but further approval would then be required before going to tender. Despite the fact the 6,400 square metre building is a scaled back version of the original plans and will not house local doctors, who withdrew from the project prior to this juncture, the list of services to be provided in the centre is still sizeable. Among those are out-patient services, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry, chiropody, dentistry, radiology, speech and language therapy and rehabilitation services. The new centre will also be the town base for the MIDOC GP out-of-hours service along with accommodating district nursing, homecare teams, social work teams, minor surgery capability and opthamology services. The Primary Care project is expected to take 18 months to complete once construction begins however, it seems it will be 2010 at the earliest before that happens.