Mental hospital closed to admissions

THE Central Mental Hospital (CMH) will be closed to new admissions until the end of the summer at the earliest and even then will only take in new patients as others leave.

Fine Gael yesterday said mental health minister John Moloney had confirmed to the party that CMH must refuse new admissions because staff vacancies cannot be filled due to the HSE recruitment embargo. Those new admissions would include members of the public who are at a major a risk of suicide and prisoners who have either been declared not guilty by reason of insanity or are a risk to themselves or others.

Niall O’Sullivan, Psychiatric Nurses Association branch secretary, said the hospital had confirmed to him that there are still 23 vacancies, and while a small number of staff are due to return from career breaks they are more than outnumbered by the number who are due to retire before the end of the summer.

The staff who remain are having to do long periods of overtime – at 9pm on one night last week 27 staff were working overtime because there were so many patients on suicide watch or at risk of self harm.

Mr O’Sullivan said those staff can only do so much overtime because they could become a liability to themselves or others if overtired.

Therefore the situation cannot continue and the hospital is being forced to stop all new admissions.

“The plan is to shut down a 16-bed ward which will free up to 20 staff to be redistributed around the hospital,” said Mr O’Sullivan. “That will take until the end of the summer.”

At that point, he said the hospital would open to admissions but only on the basis of “one in, one out”.

The Central Mental Hospital is the facility which has been empowered under the Mental Health Act 2001 and the Criminal Law Insanity Act 2006 to take prisoners who are found to be suffering mental health problems. It is unclear where these patients are due to be treated without access to CMH.

Last night it was put to Mr Moloney’s department that he had confirmed the closure of the hospital to new admissions due to the embargo.

His office said: “It is understood from the HSE that, as of today, the hospital is closed to admissions. As a result of a number of admissions last week, the hospital is full, the closure is not because of the staffing embargo. It is also understood that the HSE is confident that the issue of staffing will be resolved shortly.”