Mary White (Fianna Fail)

Why is the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Mary Harney, allowing cuts in acute services in hospitals for people who turn up in accident and emergency departments, having deliberately self-harmed. There has been a serious cutback in nurses in accident and emergency departments that are dealing with deliberate self-harm. On the one hand, we have an increase in suicide and the incidence of deliberate self-harm, with young men in particular turning up in emergency departments, where the services have been drastically cut. It is a paradox that there is more deliberate self-harm and suicides, and yet the acute services have been drastically cut back.