Máire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Everybody in the HSE is under pressure, be they the witnesses before us today or the front line staff. Picking up on the Chairman's comments, was no alert sent? I have a response here to a Parliamentary Question on planning performance and programme management. Many committee members have asked this question of the HSE, as have NGOs, and I know that Mental Health Reform is here today. I myself received this response in October. Surely some alert must have gone out somewhere if the HSE received 30 or 40 communications stating the importance of this matter and how much we need to focus on it.

Can the witnesses comment on whether allocating just over 6% of the overall HSE budget is adequate for our mental health services? This allocation stood at 14% in the early 1990s and is currently at 13% in Britain and in many other countries in Europe and further afield. I would also like a comment on the decision to shut down the six-bed high dependency unit in Tallaght Hospital at the end of this month. This is due to staff shortages but I would also like to know about the implications on the budget. I worked in high-dependency units for a long time and I know that shifting from such a unit to a general ward requires far more supervision and far more so-called "specials" for very volatile individual patients in the form on one-to-one, two-to-one or three-to-one nursing. This brings in both the dignity of nursing that patient, as the nurse is with them 24-7, but also extra demands on the budget of that hospital as it has to provide extra special services to ensure risk safety in the aftermath of the decision to shut a custom-built high-dependency unit. Will Tallaght Hospital be penalised when it goes over its allocated budget, or will the HSE give it extra money because this arises from a HSE decision?