Minister criticised for closing psychiatric beds

The Government and junior minister Kathleen Lynch were accused of prioritising “political expediency” over the needs of mental health patients as they were lambasted in the Seanad for shutting acute psychiatric beds in counties Galway and Cork.

Busloads of protestors from the west travelled to Leinster House yesterday to voice their opposition to HSE plans to close down acute psychiatric beds at St Brigid’s Hospital in Ballinasloe. Just 24 hours earlier, they had forcibly prevented workers from transporting five beds from the psychiatric unit there.

Dozens of protestors maintained a vigil outside the Ballinasloe facility again yesterday morning.