Mr. Peter Hughes:

In answer to the questions specifically to me, yes we have come out of pay talks and the pay commission in its report highlighted the recruitment and retention issues for psychiatric nurses as a key area of difficulty. Although we made an effort to say it was urgent and needs to be addressed and we hoped to engage further on it, there has been no urgency in addressing the issue.

The 11 beds in the Linn Dara services closed because they did not have enough nurses. They had only 50% of what they should have had. Most of the staff in Linn Dara are relatively newly qualified and they are going abroad. Even within Ireland private services give them incentives and will pay a certain amount up front if the nurse will stay two years. They go to the UK and Australia, where their education is supported, they get time off to do it, it is paid for and they have subsidised accommodation. The NRS is building 20,000 units for staff accommodation because it knows this is a problem. The high rents in Dublin were mentioned. That needs to be addressed, whether through subsidised accommodation or a rent allowance. Nobody is listening but we are losing the nurses year on year. A graduate scheme was brought in to pay 85% of the staff nurse salary for the first two years to those people who qualified and then 90%. The majority of them emigrated and it would be very difficult to get them back. That was one of the biggest insults to any profession, not to pay the salary after people had done a four year honours degree. Those people have left with a seriously bad taste in their mouths. We need to keep the people we have here and to keep those who will be trained in the next few years.

Senator Devine mentioned that there is no mother and baby bed in the country. When I started training as a psychiatric nurse and for several years after that, there were several mother and baby beds. Twenty-five years on, we seem to be stepping backwards instead of forwards. Two years ago there were 74 operational beds. We are now down to 48. One always imagines that services will gradually improve rather than deteriorate. We are seeing the deterioration of the child and adolescent services rather than their improvement.