Minister to meet doctors over unit

MENTAL Health Minister Kathleen Lynch is to meet consultant psychiatrists from the south-east to discuss the HSE’s planned closure of a 49-bed acute unit.

The meeting takes place on Wednesday when consultants concerned about the plans to close St Michael’s psychiatric unit in Clonmel next spring, will ask Ms Lynch to approve an “interim suspension” of the plans.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny met a delegation of doctors and public representatives in Clonmel last week and heard a presentation on the recent development of South Tipperary General Hospital, described as “its evolution into one of the busiest and most innovative centres of its kind,” by the Clonmel-based Save Our Hospital Action committee.

The consultants outlined the “strong and interactive relationship” between South Tipperary General and St Michael’s Acute Psychiatric Unit, the committee stated.

The doctors are unhappy about the plans to close St Michael’s by the end of March 2012 and replace it with a “crisis house” and a home-based treatment team, with backup from day hospitals in Cashel and Kilkenny. Inpatient beds for north Tipperary are being transferred to Ennis later this year and those for south Tipperary will be transferred to Kilkenny by next spring, under the HSE’s plan.

Campaigners have called on Ms Lynch, to approve an interim suspension of closure plans, pending “the proper development of community alternatives”, and say “a much safer and better approach” would be a phased bed reduction in St Michael’s while these are put in place, with the final number of beds required to be dictated by clinical need.