About 800 nurses and midwives from across the country were protesting outside the Nursing board headquarters in Blackrock, Dublin today against registration fee hikes.

Despite calls from local politicians and the public, the HSE has no plans to reduce parking charges at Kerry General Hospital in Tralee.

The HSE has been accused of "dragging its feet" in implementing safety measures at a psychiatric unit where 44 incidents of alleged violence on staff took place in a three-month period.

The Health and Safety Authority has been asked to inspect a hospital’s psychiatric unit where six nurses have been allegedly assaulted in the last fortnight.

The Inspectorate for Mental Health Services is carrying out a review after it was revealed that 14 people have died by suicide in the past 18 months while under the care of the HSE in Carlow, Kilkenny, and South Tipperary.

A local health service held up as “best mirroring” the Government’s stop-start ‘Vision for Change’ mental health reform is facing “serious cutbacks” due to staff shortages in the system.

The Psychiatric Nurses’ Association has called on the HSE to reverse a raft of proposed bed closures at mental health units in Cork after one of its members was attacked while on duty.

I refer to your recent article (Irish Examiner, Jan 8) where Minister Kathleen Lynch claims that she successfully fought new mental health staff delays.

The HSE plans to sell off a Victorian-era institution in Co Kerry, but a campaign is getting under way to have it retained for public use.

I refer to your report titled ”Government urged to reaffirm commitment to mental health” (Irish Examiner, Oct 23) in which Minister with Responsibility for Mental Health, Kathleen Lynch, states that the €15m dropped from the mental health budget of €35m specifically set aside and ringfenced in 2014 to populate and enhance the roll-out of a community mental health service, will be restored in 2015.

A mentally ill patient with a persistent choking problem was denied access to essential speech and language therapy as the HSE did not have a service for adults in mental health facilities.

Two children in urgent need of in-patient psychiatric care were admitted to the adult service at Cork’s Mercy University Hospital because there were no beds available in the child and adolescent mental health services.

The Psychiatric Nurses’ Association (PNA) yesterday claimed conditions at a dedicated unit in Kerry General Hospital, where three male nurses were assaulted by a disturbed patient, are dangerous.

One of the country’s leading psychiatrists said the Mater Hospital has a “zero tolerance” approach when it comes to illicit drug use at its psychiatric wing — staff immediately kick the offender out.

Staff at an acute psychiatric unit in Ennis have confirmed that drug use among patients has been a problem but said no such unit was likely to be “immune” from the issue.

One staff nurse in the HSE earned over €144,000 last year, one of four nurses to earn over €140,000.

Key officials will not be held to account over an unmonitored Siptu fund, writes Conor Ryan

People should continue to protest against our massive debt and the hardships it is causing, the leader of the trade union movement insisted after tens of thousands took to the streets.

Nursing unions say the HSE initiative to hire 1,000 graduate nurses at 80% of previous salaries is a cheap labour scam.

I refer to your front page report (Nov 12) on the high level of suicide in Co Kerry and Co Cork.

Addiction services for almost 1,000 people will be “set back 10 years” by major cuts imposed yesterday.

Overcrowding at an acute psychiatric unit is forcing staff to locate patients in an activities therapy room during the night.

Another weekend — another march against HSE cutbacks.

For the first time in 160 years, an imposing building which dominates Killarney, Co Kerry, and which once had more than 1,000 residents, was unoccupied last night.

People from south Kerry have called on politicians across the spectrum to support their campaign for the retention of a mental health facility.

Vulnerable patients are being discharged early or failing to secure a bed due to mental health service cutbacks, leading to suicide in some cases, the Psychiatric Nurses’ Association said yesterday.

I REFER to your report and editorial comment (Jan 17) on the 2012 HSE National Service Plan.

There was no psychiatric expert available to the gardaí to advise on the best way to deal with a psychiatrically ill man when they were confronted by John Carthy, an armed manic-depressive, at Abbeylara in April 2000. They ended up shooting him dead.

MENTAL health services are in “free fall”, with nurses and patients subjected to increasingly violent attacks, staff leaving in record numbers and gardaí and riot squads frequently called in to restore calm to acute and secure units.

IN the space of 24 hours we have been told that the State’s attempt to rescue Anglo Irish Bank’s bondholders will cost at least €24,000,000,000 – €24 billion may be easier to read but it remains equally incomprehensible – and that gardaí in riot gear have been used to restore order on psychiatric wards because there are no longer enough nurses to meet the needs of the day.

THE retirement of an unprecedented number of psychiatric nurses in Kerry will have serous implications for mental health services in the county, a nurses’ union leader warned.

OVER 100,000 public servants providing frontline services in healthcare, security and emergency response will resist Government attempts to impose the cutbacks proposed in the McCarthy report.

THOUSANDS of private and public sector workers will converge on Dublin this afternoon to express outrage at the Government’s handling of the economic crisis.

THE threat of escalated industrial action by more than 7,000 psychiatric nurses nationwide was lifted last night following what appeared to be a successful conclusion to talks brokered by the Labour Relations Commission.

NATIONWIDE workto-rule protests by 6,000 psychiatric and mental health nurses will start today — three weeks ahead of similar action by 28,000 other health professionals.

JUST as his fellow politicians eulogised Mr Ahern yesterday afternoon, in what was his last day in the Dáil as taoiseach the general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses’ Association, Des Kavanagh claimed that the psychiatric sector “faces cutbacks unimagined since the 1980s” and that “people are dying because of... low investment in mental healthcare”.

STRIKE action by up to 6,000 nurses working in psychiatric and mental health services could begin as early as April 30.

JUST as the warning to the Health Services Executive about defective cancer screening equipment at Portlaoise began to slip from the frontline of public consciousness another tragedy predicted by health professionals has come to pass.

NURSES said yesterday they would give the Labour Court a last chance to deal with their pay claim before they considered the “nuclear option” of industrial action.

THE Psychiatric Nurses’ Association will spend the next number of weeks consulting with members to determine what action to take in response to the failure of benchmarking to grant any pay increase to the majority of nurses.

THE Psychiatric Nurses’ Association is to consider all-out strike following the failure of benchmarking to deliver any pay increase for the bulk of its members.

A MOTHER of five who fell to her death from the fourth floor at Tallaght Hospital in Dublin last weekend will be buried today following her funeral Mass.

NURSES at a HSE-run nursing home in Co Clare have strongly rejected claims that an elderly patient who died, while in care there last month was neglected or ill-treated.

Proposals aimed at resolving the dispute over nurses’ pay and working conditions will be rejected today, a union chief has predicted.