A retired nurse who was over the alcohol limit when he knocked down and killed an 87-year-old male pedestrian has been jailed for two years.

WOMEN in the Central Mental Hospital are locked up for 12 hours at night in cell-like rooms and have to ring for nurses to go to the toilet at night, an inspection report by the Mental Health Commission (MHC) found.

THE HSE has come under fire over the closure of 65 public residential beds across a number of health facilities in the mid-west.

THE HSE made just €6 million from the sale of mental health properties between 2005 and 2011, documents obtained by the Irish Examiner have revealed.

POLICY for the future development of our mental health services is outlined in the Report of the Expert Group on Mental Health Policy, A Vision for Change (2006), which proposed a new model of service delivery.

STAFF shortages, bordering on what a nurse’s union described as “dangerous”, are affecting day services at a hospital for intellectually disabled people.

THE Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) has served notice of industrial action on the Health Service Executive because of its failure to properly facilitate the planned closure of mental health services at St Ita’s Hospital.

A RETIRED carpenter involved in seven accidents over a 23-year period has secured €91,463 in High Court damages arising from a violent collision which left him and his 12-year-old son trapped inside their Toyota jeep for 90 minutes with a strong smell of petroleum coming from the crash scene.

A MOTHER-OF-THREE who died after taking a drug overdose was failed by the health system, her mother told an inquest yesterday.

LARGE residential institutions are using medication to subdue residents who exhibit challenging behaviour, it has been claimed.

DARACH Murphy was devastated when his brother Seamus, who has a mild intellectual disability, was admitted to a closed ward at St Ita’s Hospital in Portrane, a north Dublin suburb miles from his home in Glasnevin.

OLDER people with mental health problems who have been moved out of a 19th-century asylum deemed unfit for purpose by the Mental Health Commission (MHC) will move back again once a unit has been refurbished.

SO there is now a plan to end one of Ireland’s greatest scandals.

PATIENT lives are being put at risk because the Government’s ongoing health service recruitment ban is forcing nurses to take on excessive workloads due to widespread staff shortages, it has been claimed.

Outraged relatives of elderly people who died in the care of Leas Cross Nursing Home tonight dismissed an official inquiry in to the scandal as a whitewash.

MARGARET SHERIDAN, one of the hundreds who yesterday visited the willow tree stump in Rathkeale, Co Limerick, which many claim projects the image of Our Lady, said it has worked a miracle of sorts for her husband, Dan, who is on dialysis.

FAILINGS in mental health units across the country including “serious deficits” in services, “unacceptable” living conditions, and “insufficient” bathing facilities, have been highlighted in the 2008 Inspector of Mental Health Services report.

MANY people are still homeless as a result of last week’s flooding in Newcastle West and surrounding areas.

A north Co Dublin hospital has put infection control procedures in place after one patient died and several others fell ill.

THE consultant psychiatrist who suffered horrific wounds when a patient went on a rampage at a Limerick day hospital on Thursday was still critical but stable last night.

KEVIN KELLY’S abiding memory from the moment he was stabbed was the feeling that death would have been preferable to the pain caused by the knife.

LEAS CROSS was being used as an “overflow” facility for hospitals with a high number of admissions, the nursing home’s owner has claimed.

THE right of patients to decent accommodation must be preserved when the State’s 15 mental hospitals are sold off, a homeless organisation demanded last night.

A 73-year-old woman died from massive bed sores which left gaping holes down to the bones after spending nine weeks in Leas Cross nursing home, an inquest heard last March.

A 76-year-old woman, who had a history of depression, drowned in a bath at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital, an inquest heard tonight.

A 73-YEAR-OLD woman died from massive bed sores which left gaping holes down to the bone after spending nine weeks in a Dublin nursing home, an inquest heard last night.

IF YOU want an emotive image to portray the Irish health service, the chances are that you are going to wheel a trolley into your argument.

The Health Service Employers Agency has expressed concern about the high number of assaults on health workers in Ireland.