Minister opens 'care village'

A €45 MILLION "care village" for older people that incorporates a nursing home with apartments, housing and community facilities was opened by Minister for Health Mary Harney yesterday.

Knightsbridge Village, on the outskirts of Trim, Co Meath, contains a 102-bed private nursing home, 28 two-bedroom single-storey houses and 41 apartments.

The apartments range in price from just under €300,000 to over €360,000 and the houses cost up to €435,000, depending on size. Residents also pay an annual service charge of between €2,000 and €2,900.

The nursing home provides care for older people as well as services for people with chronic illnesses or dementia.

Also on site are medical services, a shop, café, hair salon and nail bar, village hall and a bowling green. There are also plans to develop a gym and a primary care centre on the site.

Ms Harney said the HSE is in negotiation with the company behind Knightsbridge, Barchester Healthcare, which has 160 nursing home and village centres in the United Kingdom.

"That project is to go to the board of the HSE and I'm optimistic it will be approved next week." She said the facility could be set up sometime later this year.

Ms Harney welcomed the opening of the retirement community. "We need facilities of this kind around the country.

"The fact that there are so many support services, it really is a holistic approach to living . . . all of that is so important to enhance the quality of life of older people."

On the proposed restructuring of the HSE, Ms Harney said it would not lead to disparity of services around the country.

Under the proposals, authority for running hospital and community services would be devolved to new regional management structures. Regional directors will run hospital and community services in their area and will determine how funding from the HSE should be allocated.

Asked whether localised decisions on funding could lead to a disparity in services, Ms Harney said it would not.

She added that the policy and configuration of services would be decided at the top and the way they were delivered would be a matter for those at local level.

"Once the budgets are allocated at the centre it will be a matter for those at a local level to prioritise what their needs are, rather than having it prescribed at the top."

She said the current system did not serve the needs of patients. "When an area gets its budget, provided it lives within its budget, how it actually provides its service is not going to be prescribed by the centre," she said.

"Somebody won't have to come from a hospital right up to Parkgate Street and Prof Drumm's [chief executive of the HSE] office to get approval to give a home-care package and nursing home subvention."

She said the HSE would be consulting its employees and other stakeholders before deciding on the number of regions to be created under the new proposals.

"We have eight regions on the hospital side and four on the community side, so I think it will be somewhere between six and eight," she said.