Sonas to invest €100m in retirement care centres

Retirement home group Sonas Healthcare says it plans to invest €100 million in retirement care centres across Ireland over the next decade.

The company, which already has nursing homes in Enniscrone and Roscommon and is due to open another in Athlone later this year, will build as many as 40 so-called independent living units for the elderly over the 10- year period.

"There's a gross deficiency in infrastructure and in the range of accommodation available to satisfy requirements for this sector of the population," said Sonas chief executive Gerry Jordan. "It is simply not good enough just to provide extra full-term nursing home beds."

Unlike traditional nursing home care, which sees many elderly people cooped up in small bedrooms away from their family and friends, Sonas's new sites will provide facilities for the elderly within their own community, according to Mr Jordan.

"The increasingly healthy elderly population require the provision of a lifestyle choice, which includes fully independent accommodation requirements together with proper security and maintenance," he said.

The so-called independent living units will offer a secure community for elderly people with an emphasis on independence and recovery, he says.

They are also suitable for people recovering from illness or surgery. Mr Jordan said Irish private investors had provided the funding.

Sonas, along with its rivals including UK nursing home chain Barchester Healthcare, is seeking to take advantage of the changing profile of the world's population.

Where once elderly relatives used to move in with other members of their families during retirement, this is now less common. Better standards of living and improved healthcare facilities mean people are living longer and suitable accommodation for the elderly is in high demand.

The number of people over the age of 65 is expected to almost double to 767,300 by 2026, meaning that 20 years from now more than 16 per cent of the population will be in retirement, according to Goodbody Stockbrokers.

Earlier this month Barchester, which is backed by Irish businessmen Dermot Desmond, Denis Brosnan, John Magnier and JP McManus, said it was seeking to expand into Ireland.

Company chief executive Mike Parsons said it had been drawn to Ireland by an emerging gap in the market and incentives designed to stimulate investment in healthcare.

'According to Dr Ian Hunter, a senior healthcare analyst at Goodbody Stockbrokers, the combined investment in healthcare by the private sector could reach €3 billion over the next five years.

Sonas's Mr Jordan said the company planned to start building centres for the elderly in Limerick, Galway, Ennis and Wexford in the next two to three years. There will be a nursing home and independent living units at each site, he said.

Sonas, which was formed in February 2001, employs about 75 people at its nursing homes unit. It also runs childcare facilities in Dublin, Athlone and Limerick.