SPENDING public money to build a swimming pool and a gym and then refusing to fund their operation seems like a sick joke, but such is the case at Cregg House in Co Sligo.
The pool, which was completed in June 1994, was built with £320,000 of National Lottery funding and a further £200,000 raised locally.
Designed for the use of people with mental and physical handicaps, the pool includes recessed walkways around it so nurses and attendants can easily reach the people they are caring for, with a space for a hoist to lift those who need help in and out of the water.
The Sisters of La Sagesse, who set up the centre when they came here from England in 1955, have not yet bought the hoist. There is little point in doing so at the moment, even if they had the money.
The pool has lain empty and unused for the past two years. The gym, which could double as a badly needed party room, disco and workshop, is also empty. It is heated to prevent the wooden floor from cracking in the winter cold, but otherwise it is a dead and depressing place.
The sisters' application for funding has been politely turned down by the Department of Health, which says it has not got the £140,000 they say is needed to employ six staff for the pool and gym, and pay maintenance costs.
Only the prospect of a general election is likely to change matters. That, or the generous help of some benefactor, a fact which has sparked much black humour in the canteen in the past two weeks.
One wag suggested renaming the facility, which at the moment is called after Marie Louise Trichet, one of two "wise women" who set up the order in France in the early 1700s. Perhaps they would fare better if they called it the "Ben Dunne Pool". Another suggested a letter to Santa Claus.
"We're very sad and disappointed that it's not in use," says Sister Margaret Morris, the director of services at Cregg House.
"We've a good facility, and we've people who need it. To me it's a waste of public money having it sitting there," she says.
The centre is near Rosses Point and caters for 218 people, ranging from some with a slight mental handicap to those with severe and profound handicaps, and people suffering from cerebral palsy.
"Most of them come from the North Western Health Board catchment area Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal. But we do have people from other counties who have been here a long time and whose parents are happy for them to stay," she says.
The centre also includes 11 semi independent chalets and a group of hostels in Sligo town, about five miles away, where clients are encouraged to live as normal and as independent a life as possible.
Two further hostels are due to open in the new year, one in Sligo and the other in Tubbercurry.
A wide range of activities is provided, including crafts, art work, horticulture, home baking and computer training, and some contract work.
The overall ethos is to enable each person with a mental handicap to be recognised as an individual, whose rights and dignity are upheld and protected at all times", according to an information leaflet.
There is a special national school, and a school of nursing which provides a three year course for those who wish to specialise in this area.
Although these facilities are welcome, the centre would be greatly enhanced if it were given the money to operate the pool, says Sister Margaret.
"There would be a whole range of benefits, people would use it for arthritis, you could exercise cramped limbs. It would be good, exercise for young people with cerebral palsy, with contractures. Just being in water is good."