Mental health service ‘failing’

A SENIOR union official yesterday described Clare’s mental health service as “a failing service.”

Branch secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) in Co Clare, Denis Meehan, pointed out that since 2009 50 nurses have left the service without being replaced, 25% of the service’s 200 nurses.

Mr Meehan was responding to the publication of overtime figures for nurses in the mid-west last year, where the top 10 recipients were nurses working in the Clare mental health service.