Psychiatric patients are ‘living in Dickensian conditions’

NURSES’ representatives at a Limerick psychiatric hospital claim patients are living in Dickensian accommodation while health board staff occupy plush offices.

Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) national chairman Liam McNamara said windows in St Teresa’s unit of St Joseph’s Hospital haven’t been washed in four years and that a floor had recently collapsed, while a huge investment had been made in new offices for health board staff.

“There are 38 elderly people in that unit and in all the time I worked there, which is four years, the windows were never washed. Prior to that, they were only washed on the outside.