Nursing Homes Dail Éireann — 2026-05-12 ============================================================ Kieran O'Donnell (FG), Limerick City I thank Deputy Healy-Rae. I join with him in commending all the staff in both St. Columbanus and the district hospital in Killarney who provide such a great service to the patients who are there. As I said, the 101 patients will transfer over to the new community nursing home unit. All current staff will transfer to the new facility and I have been advised that the recruitment campaigns for additional staff are well under way to allow for the opening of the additional beds in Killarney. I want to see the new community nursing home unit open in Killarney. That is a process. There is an application before HIQA and the way that will work is that the existing residents in St. Columbanus and the district hospital will transfer to the new nursing home when it is registered. I want to see the additional capacity of 29 beds in the CNU to bring it up to 130 beds to be in place as quickly as possible. As I said, it will provide 50 long-stay beds, 30 dementia-specific beds and 50 short-stay beds. It is hugely important and is a priority for me as the Minister of State with responsibility for older people. It is a priority for the Department of Health, the HSE and the Government. We will get the new, state-of-the-art community nursing home unit in Killarney open as quickly as possible. Everyone is working actively on that goal for Killarney. I will continue to meet the HSE, along with the Department of Health officials, to ensure that it continues to get the priority it deserves. I again state that the opening of the new community nursing home unit in Killarney is an absolute priority for myself, the Department of Health and the HSE. I am committed to ensuring that the residents can move into their new homes without delay. It is their home and that is something that is very important. I once again thank the staff representatives for their engagement. This is a collaborative effort and we all want to work to ensure that we get this new 130-bed state-of-the-art nursing home unit in Killarney open as quickly as possible. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-12/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-12