Work to start on Primary Care Centre in Offaly due to start today

THE first sod will be turned and construction work will commence on Birr's new Primary Care Centre this Tuesday, March 19.

Joe Ruane, the HSE's Area Manager for the Midlands, told last week's monthly meeting of Birr Municipal District, that after many years of waiting the building work will at last start.

“The construction work will take 18 months,” he said, “and the plan is to be operational by the fourth quarter of 2025. A hundred construction workers will be employed and 75 HSE employees will work in the new Centre.”

The developer is Joe Byrne from BPI Investments Portarlington, who has built a number of Primary Care Centres previously. Operating under a Public Private Partnership the developer will hand over the building, once it has been built, to the HSE.

“The handover will probably be in the fourth quarter of 2025,” said Mr Ruane. “We will then take a period of time to fit it out before the staff move in.”

The site will be at the rear of the Outdoor Education Centre on the Roscrea Road. The three-storey development will span 4,060 square metres, making provision for 807 square metres of GP surgery space, a pharmacy spanning 138 square metres and two consulting rooms totalling 34 square metres. There will sadly be no Midoc/out-of-hours GP service.

A two-storey ambulance base with single storey garage will also form part of the new development, along with 157 car-parking spaces, six motorcycle parking spaces, 50 bicycle spaces, 16 electrical charge points and traffic control barriers for employee parking.

It is expected that the new development will provide physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech & language therapy, dental and mental health services when it opens.

Cllr John Carroll warmly welcomed the news during the Birr MD meeting. “This is very good news,” he said. “We have been waiting a long time for it and it's badly needed. Everyone in the Birr area welcomes this news. I hope now that the construction work will proceed as quickly as possible.”

The plan to build a new Primary Care Centre in Birr was first mooted more than a decade ago and has been beset by difficulties ever since, primarily in relation to finding a suitable site to build on.

Two sites, at Birr Rugby Club and a council-owned site at the Rectory Field, were rejected, before the site on the Roscrea road behind the Outdoor Education Centre was eventually earmarked for the development. The full site encompasses 19 acres, but the Primary Care Centre is to be built on 3.5 acres of the site.