Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy James Browne for bringing the Bill before the House. I also thank the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Jim Daly, for meeting me and Deputies Mattie McGrath and Seamus Healy earlier today.

I will be very parochial in my comments because there is a crisis in health services in my county. In County Tipperary we have no psychiatric bed of any description. We were promised capital investment in South Tipperary General Hospital and if such capital investment is forthcoming, it is essential that a psychiatric unit form part of it. We also need a psychiatric unit in Nenagh in the north of the county. We have mental health clinics in the county which are completely under-resourced and both GPs and patients have lost faith in them. A GP visited my constituency clinic in Thurles last Saturday morning and told me that he would no longer refer any of his patients to the mental health clinic in Thurles, which serves 34,000 people. In recent weeks three teenagers have been in the paediatric unit in Clonmel hospital - one has been there for 11 weeks - while awaiting admittance to an acute psychiatric unit in Cork for adolescents. The position is just untenable. When Deputy Helen McEntee was Minister of State at the Department of Health with responsibility for mental health services, we were promised a Jigsaw project in County Tipperary, but that has not happened. The county is in crisis in mental health services which are completely under-resourced. We need funding for psychiatric beds and mental health clinics to be properly resourced.

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