Hospice reveals new building plans that preserve more of green field site

A revised plan will be lodged this week for a new 36-bed hospice, built over two storeys instead of one and without its own separate entrance off the Dublin Road – thus preserving two-thirds of an ancient meadow at Merlin Park.

The original plan, rejected by the planners, was to build a 26-bed bungalow unit fronting onto the Dublin Road.

A concerted campaign by locals garnering 5,000 signatures to save the only accessible EU Annex 1 Lowland Hay meadow in Galway city failed to assuage councillors, who voted to allow the development against the advice of City Council officials.

Planner Helen Coleman had argued the site had “high environmental and amenity value, significant biodiversity, has characteristics of protected habitats, and high diversity of flora and fauna”.

She said it boasted scenic value at the gateway to the city and the land was important for “passive amenity for recreation, for the local community,  the recently-established neighbourhoods of Doughiska, and the future residents of Ardaun”.

“We feel there would be capacity within the existing CF (Community Facility) lands to accommodate a facility of this scale,” she contested.

But the councillors disagreed, buoyed by the argument put up by hospice management that this site was the only one which ticked all the boxes after an exhaustive search of 30 alternatives over five years.

Galway Hospice CEO Mary Nash told the Connacht Tribune that the biggest compromise in the new design was building up in order to reduce the development’s footprint on the wildlife meadow.

“Although the second-floor rooms will have floor to ceiling windows, they won’t have access to the outside. Going two-storey for us has been huge. It will take up less than half of the seven-acre site; two-thirds of the meadow is not being touched. The entrance is through the hospital entrance instead of us having our own entrance and we won’t be fencing it off. We’ve also pushed the unit back nearby Units 5 and 6 and the parking is adjacent to this.”

They have also decided to increase the beds by ten to meet the demand for the next 15 years.

“From a cost point of view, it’s more economical to do it all in one go rather than building an extension and this will meet the demand for the medium term. We have a constant waiting list in Renmore, there are four or five patients waiting on a daily basis,” she explained.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.