Group marks World Brain Day with call for more Cork specialist beds 

Neurological Alliance Ireland has called for more specialist beds for neurorehabilitation in Cork to be announced as part of the upcoming budget.

The group marked this year’s World Brain Day with an event in Peamount Healthcare, Dublin, where its members highlighted to attending ministers and TDs that Ireland has less than half of the neurorehabilitation beds needed for its population.

Forty neurological charities came together to call on the government to deliver on its Programme for Government pledges to neurorehabilitation in the upcoming budget.

The NAI are calling for investment in 45 beds in the upcoming budget to begin to address the shortfall of neurorehabilitation beds across the Midlands and South West, which includes Cork.

It comes as last summer, NAI’s Magdalen Rogers told the Oireachtas Health Committee: “We have one consultant in rehabilitation in Cork who has no dedicated beds so they cannot put patients in a bed and they are transferred to the National Rehabilitation Hospital” in Dublin. 

In the HSE’S 2025 capital plan, €4m was announced for the refurbishment of existing vacant space in Blarney Community Nursing Unit for use as a 20-space neuro-rehabilitation unit.

Ireland has a 58% shortfall in the number of neurorehabilitation beds for patients recovering from conditions such as stroke, acquired brain injury and those living with progressive conditions like multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.

The Programme for Government includes a commitment to develop more specialist inpatient neurorehabilitation beds in response to this critical shortage.

Speaking at the event in Peamount Healthcare, CEO of the Neurological Alliance of Ireland (NAI), Magdalen Rogers, said: “Over 16% of people in Ireland are currently living with a neurological condition.

“Behind these statistics are the individuals and their families struggling to come to terms with the effects of a neurological condition and they have a huge fear that they won’t get access to the specialist care they need.

“A national framework published in 2019 committed to ensuring a minimum of 306 beds across the country, six years on we still have a shortage of 175 beds. Our recent survey of 700 people living with a neurological condition across Ireland showed a staggering 76% had not been able to access inpatient neurorehabilitation when they needed it.”