Continued
Dr. Myles was the Medical Officer. The Sisters had part of the dining room called the “Paupers Ward” walled off for a little chapel and furnished it with donations from their own people. The Sisters had to go to the Parish Church each morning for Mass, until in 1909 the priests agreed to celebrate morning Mass at the convent. Mother Elizabeth Moynihan was replaced by Sr. M. Gerard Curran in 1905 and shortly afterwards Srs. M. Casmir McAuliffe, Camillus Browne and Patricia Fitzgerald joined the little community.
In 1922 the workhouses system was abolished. In Kerry they were replaced by the County Home in Killarney, The inmates from the Dingle Workhouse were sent there. The building as it exists today was retained as a District Hospital and was maintained by the Kerry Co. Council until the Health Board took over the hospitals in 1971. Among the patients who ended her days there in 1956 was Peig Sayers, well known to secondary school students in the past. A room in the second floor of the hospital is still preserved as a reminder of sleeping accommodation in Famine times.
From the mid-twentieth century pressure from the public, the Sisters, the local clergy and local politicians on Kerry County Council led to gradual improvements. The wards were upgraded, maternity facilities were improved, and two wards were assigned for patients suffering from TB.
From the early 1970s Dingle Hospital evolved into a community facility caring for the elderly. It had 43 beds, divided into four wards and three two-bedded rooms. There were two female wards on the ground floor and two male wards on the first floor. The hospital beds were classified as long-stay, acute, rehabilitation, respite and hospice. St. Elizabeth’s Hospital closed in 2010, by this date the Sisters of Mercy had retired from the hospital and returned to Tralee and other places.
The patients were transferred in August 2010 to the West Kerry Community Hospital built on a new site donated by Shane and Maura O’Connor The old hospital building remains vacant to the present day, though at various stages since 2010 it had been used for a variety of purposes but nothing permanent. Recently, further proposals have been made for its use – in January 2021 it was reported that €400,000 in funding has been secured to redevelop the former Dingle Hospital. Údarás na Gaeltachta has revealed it secured €415,000 under the Rural Regeneration and Development Fund to develop a masterplan for the Old Dingle Hospital. In September2021, Mórtas Pobail applied to Kerry County Council to change the use of the former hospital buildings to a mixed-use facility. The proposed development would include an immersive and interpretative tourism experience and exhibition facility, with an entrance atrium, two exhibition galleries, auditorium and café. An enterprise hub would also be developed on the site with offices, training and workshop facilities.
“The old order changed yielding place to new…”
Southern Province 