Unanswered Questions on Rooke Mask Government U-Turns at High Cost To Taxpayer

The Government’s announcement on the Rooke Elderly Care Facility, finally provides some clarity to the community more than six years after Sir Joe Bossano first announced the project but raises unanswered financial questions that cannot mask the clear U-turns the GSLP Government have done as well as the lack of consultation by Minister Arias-Vasquez.

We welcome much-needed additional capacity for elderly residential care, particularly where this provides the opportunity for those residents who wish to live closer to the city centre and remain part of everyday community life. We also recognise the urgent need to provide places for those waiting to enter ERS and the impact these delays are having on bed availability within the GHA.

Shadow Minister for ERS and Care, Atrish Sanchez adds, “The GSD welcomes additional capacity for elderly care and wants Rooke to succeed for the residents who will call it home. But supporting better facilities for our elderly does not require us to ignore how we got here. Residents and families deserve proper consultation. The community deserves to know the future of Mount Alvernia. Taxpayers deserve to know what this project has cost and whether it represents value for money. And Gibraltar deserves to know what the Government’s long-term plan for elderly residential care actually is. After more than six years, these are not unreasonable questions. They are questions that should already have answers. The GSD will continue to ask them until those answers are provided.”

The GSD considers that the State should have a key role in delivering social care to our elderly citizens but additional capacity is only part of the story.

There is no hiding that this project started as a joint-venture with a Chinese owned entity. Modular construction was promoted as a quicker and cheaper way of delivering it. Instead, it has been massively delayed. For years the GSLP Government have said that the high costs disbursed by the Savings Bank – more than £38M – were justified because it would be privately owned and run and presumably the monies repaid. This was restated repeatedly. The GSLP manifesto of 2023 stated that residents would move in during early 2024 – more than 2.5 years ago – and that it would be privately run. As recently as this year the owners issued an expressions of interest for the management of the building. The GSD would have planned this provision of elderly care in a very different way. The joint-venture project was flawed from the start. After more than six years, it is difficult to see where the promised speed or savings of the modular approach have materialised.

What is happening now is that the taxpayers are having to bail out the Government from a failure of one of their flagship projects of their so-called National Economic Plan. One of the big unanswered questions is whether this could have been done at a far more economic level if the Government had sought to commission a purpose-built facility without joint-venture partners. The description of this being a “new chapter” by Ms Arias-Vasquez is nothing more than GSLP spin to paper over this history. If the GHA had planned a purpose built facility designed around the long-term needs of Gibraltar’s elderly population from day one would it really have planned to build a modular tower block?

Above everything else, the care, dignity and wellbeing of residents must come first. On 28th of August, the Minister for Health and Care issued a press release saying that residents and their families would hear from the GHA Director General and herself before anyone else, because that was the right order in which to do things. We agree. It was the right order. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be the order that was followed.

It is our understanding that, other than a meeting with a very small group of family members, who were subsequently taken on a tour of Rooke, ERS residents and their loved ones more widely have still not received any official communication explaining the decision, the proposed move or how it will affect them.

For the people affected, these are their homes, their care arrangements and, in many cases, major changes at a vulnerable stage of their lives. Residents and their families deserved to hear directly from those making these decisions before hearing about them through a Government PR, video or the media. They should have been given clear timely information and the opportunity to ask questions.

In January and again in February 2026, Minister Arias Vasquez assured Parliament that there would be a consultation process with ERS residents and their relatives. If Mount Alvernia residents are now expected to move to Rooke, the Government should explain what consultation has taken place, if this process has included all affected residents and their families and whether it has established that all those affected actually wish to move. Given the comments made at the press conference by the Government that they cannot run both locations it is clear that residents are effectively being presented with a fait accompli and effectively being compelled to move- something that the Government said would not happen. Another U-turn.

And if Mount Alvernia is to be emptied, what happens to the building? For years, the Opposition has raised concerns about its deteriorating condition, delays to refurbishment works which the Minister insisted were taking place, and persistent problems raised directly with the Minister by residents and families themselves.

That question cannot simply be left unanswered. From the figures currently available, Rooke is likely to be close to capacity relatively soon after the planned moves take place. We therefore need to know what the Government’s longer-term plan for elderly residential care is.

And what has this modular approach ultimately cost the taxpayer? When asked in Parliament as recently as July, the Minister for Health and Care would not provide an updated cost. Following this latest announcement, she was again asked about the figure by GBC and an updated figure was still not provided. Yet the Minister has said that the GHA Director General carried out a cost-benefit analysis and considered different options. If those options have been properly costed and compared, the Government must have the relevant financial information available to it. So why is the public still not being given the figures?

The Government should set out clearly what the development has cost, how much the GHA will pay to acquire it, what further expenditure is required to fit it out, how the project has been funded and what it will cost each year to operate.

There are further questions about the model of care, staffing, planning, safety, building approvals and regulatory oversight. We will pursue these in the hope that the people of Gibraltar are provided with real answers and not just electoral spin which they are fast growing impatient with.

Government Response to GBC questions on El Martillo funding falls short.

The GSD note the answer given by the Government in response to today’s GBC report on El Martillo Group
that: “No Government owned, affiliated or controlled company has lent any money to El Martillo Limited or any affiliated company.”

The Government has however not replied to a follow up question by GBC as to any funding sourced from the Gibraltar Savings Bank. The Government has said in answer to GSD questions in Parliament Q253/2026 that at 31 March 26, £114 million has been provided by the Savings Bank via its subsidiary, the Gibraltar National Mint Limited, to a company by the name of Community Credit Union Limited (“CCU”) which in turn has loaned monies to various private sector companies. The Government has declined to disclose the names of those entities but confirmed that the funding decisions by the Savings Bank are taken against a criteria decided solely by Sir Joe Bossano.

While the Government has not stated whether companies in El Martillo Group (the entities the focus of the GBC report) have received such monies it is clear from Company House searches that a number of companies in that group have charges registered against them in favour of CCU. It is in the public interest that if the Govt will not provide answers, then either CCU or El Martillo Group should consider making a voluntary disclosure of any loan amounts, rates and terms.

In the absence of this, there is a clear question that remains unanswered: has any of the £114 million provided through the Savings Bank to CCU ultimately been loaned to companies within the El Martillo Group, and if so how much?

The Gibraltar public is entitled to this information.

GSLP wants to hoodwink the electorate for electoral purposes

It is staggering that the GSLP continue to erect red herrings in a bid to distract from their broken promises on housing.

On the building of affordable or rental housing it is clear that their much repeated projects have been delayed (some for over a decade) or not done at all. It is very clear that they are now, for nothing other than obvious electoral purposes seeking to hoodwink a sizeable sector of the electorate – individuals who are desperate to purchase their own homes on an affordable basis – into believing that an extra 2,300 flats will, like magic, be made available to them.

Damon Bossino said: “Let us make no mistake. The Government has breached its promise as to timelines already on this new scheme as the land should have been reclaimed and building started by now.

The Government has little credibility on housing given their repeated electoral commitments in successive general elections in 2011, 2019 and 2023 that they would build rental housing. They have failed to deliver on each and every occasion. It is an absolutely undeniable fact that the last rental estate was built by the GSD.”

Keith Azopardi, the Leader of the Opposition said: “The GSD will not fall into the usual trap of GSLP diversionary tactics, but it cannot allow them to manipulate the narrative on the basis of incorrect numbers. For there to be an honest analysis, the proper comparative figures for low cost housing are therefore approximately 1300 under the GSD as against (according to them) 1,742 under the four last GSLP administrations. Also, in so far as sales of post war flats to sitting tenants the parliamentary record shows that sales were happening as recently as a few years ago. It is hard to believe sales in 2020 were still commitments of a previous administration.”

The fact is that the Government simply cannot be believed but they continue to confuse and attempt to lull people into thinking that by some waving of a magic wand their most recent announcement on the 2,300 flats will, on this occasion, somehow become reality.