There was a notable absence of Tipperary Fine Gael representatives at a meeting about St. Patrick’s in Cashel last evening.
The meeting was held yesterday at the Spafield Family Resource Centre and members of the community call for clarity, transparency, and joined up thinking by local politicians.
This comes after Deputy Michael Lowry said that there was ‘scaremongering’ happening around the Community Nursing Unit, something TDs Mattie McGrath and Martin Browne rejected at the meeting.
Speaking to Tipp FM Liam Browne, a local community activist, said the HSE are acting as ‘faceless monsters’ making all the decision without being held to account.
He went on to criticise the local Fine Gael reps who sent apologies.
“Very, very disappointed with Fine Gael – and Fine Gael at the moment are the party in power. Leo Varadkar is the Taoiseach and four of the seven Councillors in the Cashel – Tipperary area are from Fine Gael.
“And yet Fine Gael didn’t seem to feel they should send somebody – now they sent apologies but we’ve known for the last week and a half that this meeting is going to be on. I very much doubt that they had some more important than keeping a unit in St Patricks on tonight and they should have been here and people should know that they weren’t here. The Cashel Councillor didn’t come here tonight – he made apologies. But that’s really not right – we expect better and we should get better.”
There are fears that the church on the grounds of St. Patrick’s in Cashel will be closed.
It emerged at last night’s meeting that work was underway on the church to change its use to a training centre, which came as a surprise to the Oireachtas members and councillors present.
Liam Browne says many will be disappointed or angry if the church closes.
He also expressed concern that no-one seemed to be aware of the move.
“The idea that the Church is going to be closed and turned into a training centre – and it seems that that’s going on at the moment. That’s going to make people very angry.
“We need to know what’s going on – no public representative here knew about that and that’s wrong. I get very cynical – I like to think the best of our public representatives but really they’ve got to get their finger out on this one because go back to 1996 when the hospital from Cashel moved into Clonmel and from my point of view I can see the same thing happening here.”
