Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for taking the time to take this issue. It concerns the conditions in the department of psychiatry in St. Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny, which serves both Carlow and Kilkenny. It now serves patients from Tipperary since the closure of St. Michael's Unit in Clonmel yet there has been no expansion in that service even though there has been a big increase in the number of patients with which it deals. The conditions were highlighted on a number of occasions by staff. Examples were patients sleeping on makeshift mattresses on the floor and people putting two or three chairs together to provide beds for patients. It has led to significant issues for staff morale. One would question what sort of service is provided or what conditions the patients are in. A makeshift bed on the floor does not really say very much for the service. I imagine the view is probably to get people in and get them out as fast as one can because they are so overstretched.

One of the most significant issues is that we have been looking for a meeting between Members of the Oireachtas from Carlow and Kilkenny and the HSE management responsible for the department of psychiatry at the hospital since 14 February. I requested a meeting but I imagine all Members of the Oireachtas in the constituency have an interest in it. The head of the hospital group for the south east came back to say that this was not her area. There was no further information. It was just a case of her not being accountable for this. We went through the Oireachtas HSE representatives line but heard nothing back. We did so again on 15 February and 29 March and on 10 May we finally tracked down somebody who is supposed to be head of the mental health services for the CHO 5 region into which Carlow and Kilkenny fall but there was still nothing.

I am not one bit surprised about the HSE because it seems to be accountable to nobody; it does whatever it likes. As we have seen recently with the cervical smear test scandal, women are not at the top of its priority list.

I would like the Minister of State to convene a meeting of the management there. I have no faith in them given that they do not have the manners to come back to an elected representative in the area to say "I'm not the person you should be contacting, but this is the person" or "I'll get somebody to contact you with the information." It sums up the HSE and how it acts about everything. I do not have any confidence in it being able to facilitate a meeting or give us any concrete answers. I ask the Minister of State to organise a meeting for the Oireachtas Members in the constituency so that we can find out what the issues are and what we can do to try to address them. I know there is never an overnight solution to these things. At the very least we should be able to sit down with the management there and find out what the issues are.

Many staff are coming to me and other elected representatives informing us how it is nearly impossible for them to deal with these kinds of working conditions. They have obviously trained to try to help and support people at a very difficult time in their lives. They feel that their hands are tied in many cases and it is very frustrating. I would like to see if we can do something positive about this. We can certainly not get any further until somebody is willing to sit down and talk to us about it.

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