The Irish Mental Health Coalition (IMHC) has welcomed the move not to relocate the Central Mental Hospital to Thornton Hall, north Co Dublin.

MONEY should not be an issue when it comes delivering mental health services for people who are still marginalised and stigmatised in Irish society, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health has said.

VITAL reforms in Ireland’s mental health services will not exist for another 40 years because of the Government’s ongoing failure to adequately fund the service, medics have claimed.

MENTAL health experts have called for a line to be drawn in the sand over the inadequate standards of care in certain psychiatric institutions.

PSYCHIATRIC patients are struggling to access vital services for their recovery due to a “painfully slow” reform of the sector, with just two of the Health Service Executive’s (HSE’s) 16 targets for 2008 achieved by the start of this year.

PATIENT safety and public trust.

The Irish Mental Health Coalition says there has been no significant progress in mental health service in this country.

The Junior Health Minister is due before the Oireachtas health committee today to discuss the proposed relocation of the Central Mental Hospital to the site of a proposed new "super-prison" in north Dublin.

Placing the Central Mental Hospital beside a super prison in north Co Dublin will isolate patients and reinforce stigmas liked to mental illness, experts warned the Oireachtas Health Committee today.

Leading experts are warning that moving the Central Mental Hospital to a rural location beside the State's biggest prison is entirely incompatible with the principles of mental health care.

TDs and Senators will today visit the proposed site of the controversial new Central Mental Hospital.

Relatives of mental health patients opposing the relocation of one of the country’s largest facilities to the grounds of a new super prison will this week step up their campaign.

YESTERDAY a Nigerian, who has been charged with trying to sleep naked in a crib in the Redemptorist Church in Limerick on December 29, was remanded to prison following an assault in a hotel where he was accommodated by the State.

THE Health Service Executive (HSE) has been accused of “misappropriating” funds by diverting almost 50% of a special budget for mental health services into other areas of healthcare.

The Irish Psychiatric Association (IPA) and the Irish Mental Health Coalition (IMHC) issued what amounted to damning progress reports yesterday to mark the second anniversary of the publication of A Vision for Change, the Government’s framework document for mental health.

Minister for Finance Brian Cowen must provide a minimum of €10m to fund suicide prevention initiatives in the next Budget, a Government Watchdog has claimed.

THE regrettable tendency of governments to steamroll over the opinions of experts for political ends is under the spotlight in today’s Irish Examiner exposé of serious concerns over plans to relocate the Central Mental Hospital alongside a new super prison.

Helping those suffering from mental illness must be made a priority by the next Government, campaigners will insist today.

THE junior health minister with responsibility for mental health has announced plans to shut down a mental health facility which has been closed for the past five years.

MENTAL health patient and carer groups intend to express their anger at the Government’s slow progress in reforming mental health services at the polls.

It is 22 years since the almost Dickensian conditions of mentally-ill patients were identified as being in radical need of an overhaul.

A RADICAL overhaul of mental health services that will see the closure of the country’s remaining mental hospitals and the money from their sale spent on developing community-based mental health care will begin this year.