Senior HSE management have asked a psychiatric union representative to formally retract claims made about patients moved to nursing homes against their wishes and who later died.

A LARGE number of nurse retirements is impacting severely on the care of psychiatric patients in Kerry, it has been claimed.

A VICTORIAN-ERA psychiatric hospital in Co Kerry, which has been blacklisted by inspectors’ reports for years, will finally close in 2014.

THE closure of Victorian-era psychiatric institutions has been official Government policy for more than 40 years, yet hundreds of mental health patients still remain in outdated, unsuitable buildings.

MORE than 800 mental health patients are still housed in psychiatric hospitals labelled as “Dickensian deplorable and appalling” despite repeated Government promises to shut them down.

WITH the closure of St Finan’s Psychiatric Hospital in Killarney looming ever closer, the town council is stepping up pressure to obtain some of the land around the hospital for housing.