Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I echo what my party colleague said. It is a bit like "Groundhog Day". I raised the closure of 11 beds last year. Approximately 12 months to the day - there may be a couple of days in it - I am raising the decision to close the outpatient clinic at Linn Dara at a time when the 22 inpatient beds are full. According to the staff members to whom we have been listening, the HSE is not putting a sufficient focus on this. We had the same situation last year and - lo and behold - we are back with the same old thing this year. There is no such thing as forward planning. Things are breaking down. The Minister admitted earlier this year that those closure of the Linn Dara beds has put pressure on adult admissions into mental health services. For two years, this House has been debating the need to keep children out of adult services. This is another example of the failure to engage in forward planning.

I am aggrieved about the reply I received to a parliamentary question I tabled in respect of Linn Dara services, which asked "the Minister for Health the estimated annual cost of reopening the closed CAMHS" beds at the centre. It is ironic that I received the reply in question on 5 July, which was the day before the closure of the outpatient clinic. Even though I had asked about the annual cost of reopening the beds, I was told in the reply I received that it had been decided to reduce temporarily from 22 to 11 the number of inpatient beds available at Linn Dara. I was advised that this temporary reduction was applied from June 2017 to October 2017 and was necessary because of ongoing nursing staff shortages. I was further advised that funding was maintained throughout the year to assist with the reopening of these beds. It is like saying, "We gave them a bucket with no ass in it and sent them to the river to empty it". Twelve months on, we are in the exact same situation. All we are getting is absolute waffle from the Department. It cannot even answer a question. I asked for costs. There is no forward planning. If we keep going down this road, we will lose more people and more staff. Individuals and their family members and friends are suffering, unfortunately,

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