Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This issue is not about bed capacity, despite the fact that 30% of the beds in the administrative area of Galway and Roscommon have been removed. The infrastructure has not been put in place for community-led multidisciplinary teams. Some 40% of posts in the community are unfilled. It is not, therefore, an issue of bed capacity but of not having the staff to deal with whatever capacity is available in the system today. It is an unsafe unit. A brand new €3.2 million facility in Ballinasloe has never even been opened and the appeal was to consider opening it temporarily.

I do not know why the HSE is advising the Minister of State that there is no issue with bed capacity. We have previously received these guarantees from the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health services and they are not being honoured. In Galway in the past 12 days there have been 11 deaths by suicide. I do not know what the unit's discharge policy is, but the staffing levels are inconsistent with the HSE's advice. The Minister of State is not listening to those on the front line who are clearly stating there is an ongoing dangerously low staffing level in the unit. I have advised the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health services that she fails to listen to front-line staff. I am, therefore, asking the Minister of State to listen to front-line staff, not to some corporate individual in a pinstripe suit based in the HSE in Merlin Park who is talking to the Department about bed capacity. This is not an issue about bed capacity but about outcomes for patient-centred delivery of an acceptable mental health service.

This location is inappropriate and absolutely unacceptable. I ask the Minister of State to consider opening temporarily a modern public service, not some 1960s or 1970s decrepit unit. The HSE cannot even open up an amenities area that is central to the recovery of vulnerable patients. Staff have clearly stated the patients detained in the unit are not being detained by legal means because the detention does not meet the requirements of the Mental Treatment Act. The HSE has closed a holistic environment where there is supposed to be socialisation and engagement with other service users. The unit is inappropriate and I am asking the Minister of State to open temporarily the facility in Ballinasloe that lies idle.

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