*As Cahercalla celebrates its 30th anniversary of public ownership, its first chairman Fr Harry Bohan speak to The Clare Echo
“I ASKED myself why couldn’t we win All-Irelands and why couldn’t we have our own hospital”.
When Fr. Harry Bohan first became chairman of a committee tasked with transforming Cahercalla into a community hospital in 1990, he remembers “People thought we were mad”.
As Cahercalla approaches its 30th anniversary of public ownership, the Feakle man remembers the hospital’s early days. The hospital was initially opened in 1951 and was staffed by the Sisters of St. John of God before it began to encounter difficulties in the late 1980s.
“Through the 1980s, falling numbers of vocations put the sisters’ resources under stress and by 1989, they felt they could no longer run the hospital. Initially, the Midwest health board expressed an interest in using Cahercalla to provide services for the mentally ill.
The hospital staff weren’t happy with that and organised a meeting on Cahercalla’s future in September 1989” Fr. Harry recalls.
Fr. Harry remembers the huge crowd that attended that initial meeting which was chaired by solicitor Brian McMahon. Bishop Michael Harty had asked him to make an appearance on his behalf.
“It was a fairly heated meeting and there was a lot of talk. When it became obvious that no conclusion would be reached on the night, I just got up and asked the superior who was there for an opportunity for a small group to reflect on the hospital’s future.
The meeting selected Brian McMahon, Dr. Frank Couinahan and myself to look at the options”.
“This obviously was going to be a major undertaking for the group, the sisters and the community. We had no money for example! No clear mandate either, so in January of 1990 we held a public meeting in the Queen’s in Ennis.
“It was agreed at that meeting that the people of Clare would purchase Cahercalla. From there progress was slow until November 1991, a contract was signed and a deposit of £20,000 was paid” he added.
In 1992, then Minister for Health Mary O’Rourke launched the Cahercalla Community Hospital appeal. The nuns agreed to stay on until 1996 to help with the transition to a community facility.
A purchase price of £1 million was arrived at and a board of management was established, including representatives from West Clare, North Clare and East Clare with Fr. Harry Bohan acting as chairman.
“I was asked to take on the role of chairman of the board, although I was slow enough to take it on, I was hugely involved in a lot of things at the time. I agreed to do so. Adopting the community hospital was in keeping with the ethos of the sisters of St. John of God.
“We ensured that their concerns for staff and long term staff would be honoured. We always said that the important people in Cahercalla were 1) The person in the bed 2)Their relations 3) The staff and up along then from there”.
Originally from Feakle, Fr. Harry served as Parish Priest for Sixmilebridge for a number of years and now lives in Shannon.
With a keen interest in hurling, he captained Maynooth during his time in the seminary and managed the great Clare team of the 70s. In a talented squad that featured All-Stars and Feakle clubmates Seamus Durack and Ger Loughnane, Fr. Harry won two National Hurling League titles, although he still feels they could’ve won an All-Ireland.
“I couldn’t believe how Kilkenny Cork and Tipp could win All Irelands and we couldn’t.
“We missed out two All-Irelands, certainly on one. Jim Woods and myself and Matt Nugent were the selectors and I’d say we picked fourteen of the team in about a quarter of an hour.
“It took nearly two hours to pick number 15. I wanted Tom Crowe on it. In that final in 1977, (against Kilkenny) Tom threw himself at a ball about 25 yards out and scored a goal. That goal won that league.
“Cahercalla was a huge project for us to take on and the hurling made a contribution to it. But I had it in my head, why couldn’t Clare win All Irelands. It was the very same thing, we can’t we run our own hospital. Why couldn’t we have our own houses?”.
Fr. Harry also masterminded the rural housing scheme, a project that aimed to stop the decline of rural villages by constructing houses for young people.
The scheme was a huge success in areas such as Feakle and Connolly and saw 2500 houses built from Cork to Cavan. “The two concepts I totally believed in were family and community”, concluded Fr. Harry.
A community hospital was finally established in Cahercalla in 1995 in a great year for Clare.
The home received a state of the art extension in 1997 that introduced social space and palliative care. Since then, the Ennis facility has come on leaps and bounds and saw much of this progress under Fr. Harry’s tenure and even had a role to play in his own health.
“I had a little operation there myself. We developed surgical services, outpatient services and hospice care as well. We extended the place 3 times and built new rooms. About 19 consultants got involved with us. We were pushing out the boat a fair bit there”, he laughs.
