Former Tyrone star set to open £1.7m eye clinic

A FORMER Tyrone GAA star has announced that his new £1.7m specialist eye clinic in Banbridge will officially open later in the year.

Dermot Carlin, who co-founded the Solasta Healthcare clinic back in 2018, has been granted planning permission for the cross-border project, and hopes having a permanent local base will bring the company to a new level with upwards of 15 to 20 employees expected to operate out of the centre.

Not only that, but the facility will also act as a national and international centre of excellence for training clinicians.

The company hired a theatre from the former Omagh Hospital prior to the onset of Covid-19 in early 2020, and the limiting impact of the pandemic encouraged the Killyclogher man to pursue the development of their very own premises.

It’s been a long enough road to this point but the dream is now set to become a reality, as Carlin explained to the UH.

“In the last few years we were in Omagh and teamed up with London Vision Clinic in Harley Street in London, so I’ve been going back and forward, doing bits with those guys. That’s where we’ve been at until the whole planning process came through. It’s been a slow process in the last few years because of Covid but we’re getting it ramped back up now with planning permission achieved so I’m really looking forward to getting up-and-running.”

Carlin, who has been working in the field for more than a decade, explained that there’s an exceptionally high demand for eye-sight surgery in the private sphere.

“It’s an ageing population, people are living longer, cataract and eye-sight surgery is one of the most common surgeries in the world now. Obviously with the demands on the NHS, there’s quite a wait for cataract surgery so there’s a big demand for private, to get it done quicker.”