An animal welfare charity will open what’s billed as Ireland’s first purpose-built hospital dedicated to sick, injured and orphaned wildlife in Co Meath on Friday.
The hospital, which is located behind the Tara Na Rí pub in Garlow Cross, on the outskirts of Navan, was set up by Wildlife Rehabilitation Ireland, as an "emergency response" to the growing numbers of wildlife animals needing care.
Stables to the rear of the pub are being converted to accommodate animals and birds, while a portacabin is being used as an intensive care unit.
“We have rehabilitators all over the country and they’re licenced by the National Parks and Wildlife Service. They would have been taking wildlife in throughout forever really, but they’re very small little organisations and they’re vet nurses, and qualified people that we would have trained on our courses,” said Aoife McPartlin, education officer with the charity.
“ It got so, so busy, that this hospital had to be set up kind of in an emergency response to the number of wildlife that have been coming to people’s attention in the next year.”
The charity’s helpline received 5,600 calls last year informing them of distressed or injured animals. However, Ms McPartlin said that doesn’t necessarily mean there was an increase in wildlife being injured.
“ I think it’s more that there’s realisation that the animals are there. People obviously during lockdown have had more of an opportunity to be out in nature and to have a look around and see what’s what,” she added.
Foxes, badgers, pigeons, gulls and buzzards are some of the most common animal species the hospital will treat, and Ms McPartlin added that road traffic accidents are the most frequent cause of injury.
The hospital had been “in the pipeline” for a number of years, but the charity found difficulty in locating a site. A family in Navan offered them their pub, which closed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We put a shout out that we needed this emergency hospital, and this family in Navan wrote to us and said we have a pub which unfortunately has been closed due to the pandemic, and behind the pub were stables and a huge field, and we were welcome to use it. They liked the idea of repurposing it for something good,” Ms McPartlin said.
“The pub is not going to reopen in its current form anyway, because it is quite old. We’re in the grounds behind it so we can continue to do what we’re doing regardless of what they do with the pub.”
The charity is currently requesting donations on GoFundMe to cover the cost of running the hospital, which they say will be more than €100,000 per year.
“It’s extremely expensive with electricity, heating, food, beds. As it is, we’re all voluntary here at the moment. It’s surviving on the GoFundMe and the volunteering because there is not Government funding for it,” Ms McPartlin said.
“The long term goal is to have a teaching hospital. What we do at the moment is we go out to UCD and the vet nurses or vets there can take a wildlife module within their degree courses. We actually teach that module to them. We would be hoping eventually to bring that here and teach it here and to have school tours and the like as well.”
