Patient in apparent suicide days after special nurse outcry

A WOMAN plunged to her death from a fourth floor balcony at Tallaght Hospital in an apparent suicide, just days after an outcry over the lack of a suicide nurse at the facility.

It emerged yesterday that the woman, who had been treated on the ground floor psychiatric Cedar Ward in the hospital, fell to her death at about 6pm on Saturday.

The fall took place in front of shocked staff, patients and visitors.

There were also suggestions last night that the same woman had been seen around the balcony area of an upper floor just days previously, but that a hospital cleaner had managed to ensure she returned safely to her ward.

The hospital was unable to confirm this, but did confirm that a woman had died in an incident on

Saturday night.

The balcony is inside the main hospital building, near the entrance.

It is understood that the woman, believed to be in her 40s, was rushed to the accident and emergency ward of the hospital.

Efforts were made to resuscitate her, but she died.

The episode comes just days after another woman, 25-year-old Emer Carroll, criticised the treatment on offer for suicidal patients at the hospital.

Tallaght Hospital does not have a suicide prevention nurse because of the Health Service Executive (HSE) embargo on staff recruitment. Funding provided to the hospital by the National Office for Suicide Prevention to employ a nurse has not been used because of the recruitment ban.

Last week, Fine Gael deputy and president of the Irish Association of Suicidology, Dan Neville, said the position should be exempt from the ban.

Ms Carroll, who is from Kiltipper in Co Dublin and suffers from anorexia, claimed she was released from the hospital on October 26 despite telling staff that she was feeling suicidal.

The HSE responded to her criticism by stating that a consultant psychiatrist and a clinical director of psychiatry at the hospital had both declared themselves satisfied that an appropriate level of care was being provided.

A member of staff said last night that while it was too early to say for sure whether the woman’s death plunge on Saturday was a suicide, the incident seemed to be pre-meditated, and not an accidental fall.

It is not known how long the woman had been a patient at the hospital, or where she was from.