Work to start on €10m Grove mental hospital in New Year

Work on the old Grove Hospital in Tuam is expected to begin by the middle of next year and cost in the region of €10 million.

Funding has been secured from national coffers to renovate three-quarters of the Grove building and turn it into a mental day hospital along with a disability unit.

Chief Officer for Community Healthcare West Tony Canavan told a Regional Health Forum West meeting that the local team would like to renovate the entire building to use as a base for disability services while contractors are on site as in the long run it would be much cheaper.

“It’s a complex site and it’s a complex building,” he told councillors in answer to questions tabled by Fianna Fáil’s Donagh Killilea.

“We have a commitment for three-quarters of the Grove building. We’d like to do the whole building but we don’t have the funding.

“Additional costs associated with that building are increasing the final cost. We won’t know it until we get the tenders back but it will be in and around €10m.”

Cllr Killilea remarked that an additional €2.5 or €2.75m would be the shortfall to complete the entire overhaul of the former hospital, which closed a quarter of a century ago.

Planning for the development has been secured. Tender documents are being finalised and will be submitted to the design team in the HSE.

“With a fair wind we’re hoping to get started in quarter 2 of 2019,” he predicted.

The next phase of the development involves the renovation of the old Grove Hospital building for the provision of a mental day hospital along with a disability unit.

Planning permission has been secured for this development to proceed and it is expected that works will commence very shortly.

The development will be a key component of the biggest health campus outside of any Irish city with a primary care centre and an ambulance base already on the 12-acre site and a 50-bed community nursing home planned courtesy of €7 million philanthropic donation.

Mr Canavan said the HSE will likely lodge a planning application in early 2019 for this facility.