Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The expert group on mental health policy has completed its work on the preparation of a new national policy framework for the future development of mental health services and its report has been published recently. The Health Act 2004 provided for the establishment of the Health Service Executive, which has responsibility for the management and delivery of health and personal social services, including mental health services. The report of the expert group concluded that the large, old institutional psychiatric hospitals should be phased out over the remainder of this decade and the early years of the next decade and that the resources freed up by the sale of these assets should be used to develop community-based mental health services rather than institutional services. The report recommended a transfer of resources from mental health institutions either directly into the community or into the development of acute psychiatric care facilities linked to national teaching hospitals.

That is the basis for the report. It has been recognised since the publication of Planning for the Future in the mid-1980s that it is far better to move away from highly populated institutional facilities towards smaller units in the community which are akin to residential housing units. This trend has led to the almost total depopulation of St. Brendan's Hospital in Grangegorman, which has been transformed into a combined third level education institute under the control of the Dublin Institute of Technology. There is a cost factor involved in such exchanges. An exchange of resources took place between the Departments of Health and Children and Education and Science. The aim is to build up proper community-based services for these patients in the future, which appears to be a very progressive way of dealing with people with mental illness.

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