From this week’s Galway City Tribune – A proposed Primary Care Centre in the Westside – which will be nine storeys at its tallest point – is part of a plan by the HSE to ‘vacate’ its Shantalla Clinic and Newcastle Road sites for the expansion of University Hospital Galway.

Confidential HSE Board of Management documentation, seen by the Galway City Tribune, states that the Shantalla health centre site at Costello Road and the local health office at 25 Newcastle Road are “earmarked to be vacated by staff and services to make way for potential expansion of the hospital campus”.

Those two locations, which are directly adjacent to UHG, are “deemed strategic lands to support ongoing acute services development”.

Community mental health services – currently based in rented accommodation at Sherwood Avenue – will also move to the new Primary Care Centre (PCC) off Seamus Quirke Road on lands owned by former mayor Micheál Ó hUigínn.

The documentation shows that the new PCC will cost the taxpayer around €50 million in rent and fit-out costs. Around 300 staff (or ‘Whole Time Equivalents’) will be based there.

The total cost of the lease for the new building will be €44.6 million over 25 years (excluding VAT), with rent reviews every five years in line with the Consumer Price Index.

The successful bidder to develop the project was Glencar Healthcare, which is chaired by former HSE Chief Executive, Brendan Drumm, and the planning application was submitted by Valley Healthcare – a development partner of Glencar.

This is a shortened preview version of this story. To read the rest of the article, and for extensive coverage of the plans for the Ó hUigínn lands, see the December 30 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can support our journalism by buying a digital edition HERE.