Minister Carroll MacNeill is pictured here with Patrick O’Donovan TD Minister for Arts, Culture, Communications, Media and Sport; and with Kieran O’Donnell TD, Minister of State for Older People and Housing. Photograph: Don Moloney.
HEALTH OFFICIALS and Fine Gael politicians were all smiles in Limerick on Tuesday morning as the powers that be once again left Co Clare as the poor relation when it comes to the provision of health services.
Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG) was in University Hospital Limerick (UHL) on Tuesday morning to officially announce that a 43.8 acre site in Raheen had been secured at a cost of in the region of €14m.
Following on from HIQA’s review published in September, the Minister in December received Government support to adopt a blended approach to progressing all three options from the review into emergency health services in the Mid-West region.
Raheen will serve as Option B from the HIQA review which is an extension of the UHL campus under a shared governance model with UHL. The fact that the site is almost 44 acres has fuelled concern that it could also become the location of Option C from the review which is another model three hospital in the Mid-West region that includes an emergency department.
When asked if it was her preference to have two model four hospitals within ten minutes of each other, the Minister said, “That is not impossible but again that depends on what is brought to me by the project board, that is clearly a possibility for the future”.
She added, “This is a site in close proximity and it is under shared governance. This allows us to go beyond the thinking of the HIQA report, this is HIQA B, C plus, it is not limited in anyway and goes beyond when you look at the scale of the site. We’ve purchased a site that gives us Option B, Option C, Option C plus very considerably and allows us push ahead in a much more ambitious way than the HIQA report”.
According to the Minister, the Raheen site has been strategically chosen as it is both twenty eight minutes from Ennis and Nenagh. She neglected to mentioned that the Raheen site is an approximate fifty four minutes from Whitegate, one hour and four minute drive from Bellharbour and one hour and twenty three minute spin from Carrigaholt.
Responding to views that the people of Clare have been overlooked once again, the Minister said, “I have great concerns for the people of Clare, Tipperary, Limerick, and the whole region, that is why we’re trying to be so aggressive in our acquisition of the site and our open thinking on what is possible for the future. I want to see the delivery of more services in Ennis in particular. I’ve already given direction in the capital plan in relation to the delivery of much better local services so that people don’t have to travel, I am absolutely open to how we can continue to do more”.
She cited Bantry as an example for how she views Ennis Hospital progressing into the future. “The people of Clare are central to our thinking in relation to how we develop our services for the Mid-West and again I hope there will be patients in Clare participating in the clinical trials of the future”.
Speaking in UHL on Tuesday morning, Minister Carroll MacNeill stated, “This 44-acre site is located between Ballycummin Avenue and the Patrickswell Road, just 2km from UHL, Dooradoyle and provides a significant opportunity to provide meaningful additional capacity and health services to the people of Limerick, Clare and Tipperary.
“We will now establish a project board, and they will judiciously consider what services we must have on that UHL site, which we can relocate nearby to this new site and which services we can relocate to Ennis, St John’s or Nenagh. I will be returning to Government later this year with a strategic plan for the services of the region,” the Minister added.
Regarding progression of Option A from the HIQA review which is the expansion of extra capacity at UHL, since January 2020, 278 new acute beds have opened across the Mid-West, including two 16-bed rapid build units delivered in December 2024 and June 2025, and a 96-bed block opened by the Minister in October 2025. 236 of these beds are at UHL.
Enabling works are now underway for a second 96-bed block at UHL, and further 16 and 66 bed blocks are in planning for accelerated delivery. In total, these projects will increase UHL’s capacity by 306 beds since 2023.
Across the wider Mid-West region, a total of 420 additional beds will be delivered by 2031, including, 48 additional beds in Ennis by 2030/31, 42 additional beds in St John’s by 2031 and 24 additional beds in Nenagh by 2029.
