Decisions due on two neighbouring nursing homes this week

Two planing decisions will be made this week, within two days of each other, on two nursing home planning applications just a few hundred metres apart.
Yesterday, Tuesday, August 25, a decision was made to grant an application for a nursing home from Weststate Ltd, a company fronted by local businessmen Pacelli Lynch of eason Cavan and Dessie Brady of DB construction.
The pair applied for permission to develop a site at Cornagleragh, Oldtown, next to the Ballinagh Road, while Castle Manor Nursing Homes Ltd has also applied for a similar development just a few hundred metres away.
Weststate’s application was for 'to erect fully serviced 96-bedroom, two-storey nursing home with new entrance, access roadway, car parking, landscaping, detached refuse compound, with connection to public services and all associated & ancillary works’.
The duo told this paper that the project would take an investment of €10 million-plus and create 50 construction jobs.
Tomorrow, Thursday, August 27, a decision is due on whether or not to grant Castlemanor Nursing Home Ltd their application at Rosscolgan, Moynehall & Burgess Acre on the other side of the Ballinagh Road, a few hundred metres away.
The council received the application from the company, who own and run a 70-bed nursing home at Billis, Drumalee, on July 3.
Their application is for a 'fully-serviced, 76-bed nursing home, contained in a two-storey building with basement and attic accommodation. The proposed nursing home is to incorporate reception, foyer, day-rooms, dining rooms, kitchen, oratory-chapel and all associated ancillary accommodation, underground rain water harvesting tank, underground storm water attenuation tank, plant room, provision for entrance walls, service road, public footpath along with all associated services, service connections, site development and landscaping works to include new 'green area’ to also service existing residential development at development known as Ashbrooke’.
The Weststate pair bought the 12-acre site at Oldtown, which is fully serviced, off Nama late last year. It includes a Lavelle McIlinden development for three apartment blocks and 100 houses.
The two men met with residents of the unfinished estate and agreed to finish the inhabited portion of the 24-home estate with 16 more homes to be built and other works agreed.
“We would be hoping to start next year,” said Mr Lynch. ”Planning permitting and to keep all jobs and supplies and so on as local as possible and that would probably take us 12 months to complete, again, if granted,” he said.