State responsibility - Cuts hurting those most in need

REPEATED warnings have been given in these columns that the most vulnerable people on the margins of society will become the innocent victims of government cutbacks in the recession now gripping the country. Unfortunately, mounting evidence suggests those warnings were all too accurate.

Damning reports today and earlier this week give rise to serious questions that the state must answer.

How can this Government justify a situation where conditions in psychiatric hospitals are so inhumane that from next February three have been ordered not to admit any patients by the Mental Health Commission?

How can the coalition defend the enforced closure of a major respite service for people with intellectual disabilities? How can Government ministers stand over the fact that people with intellectual disabilities are living in overcrowded conditions with no therapeutic services or treatment?

So dire is the situation that the inspectorate responsible for registering approved psychiatric hospitals and in-patient facilities found conditions “entirely unacceptable and inhumane” at several locations. When officialdom resorts to such graphic language, the situation is really appalling.

This dark scenario is indefensible. It smacks more of a third world regime than of a society that likes to think of itself as progressive and Christian in ethos.

Earlier in the week, a chaplin described the closure of a major respite service for people with intellectual disabilities in the mid-west as the greatest injustice he had ever witnessed. For the sake of €157,000 a year, up to 60 families in Limerick and Clare will suffer because of Government cutbacks.

Further cutbacks in Mayo mean that people with intellectual disabilities lack treatment and are living in overcrowded HSE residential homes. As a result, those with non-challenging behaviour or mild disability will be moved to units for patients with severely challenging behaviour and profound intellectual disability. The inevitable regression can only be imagined. It is truly heartbreaking.

The elderly are also suffering. Cutbacks of 25% under the so-called Fair Deal scheme are also hanging over a community hospital in Cobh, Co Cork, where an urgent meeting to discuss the crisis takes place today.

In another ominous sign of the times, bullying in the home is on the increase as a direct result of the recession. According to counsellors involved in programmes on suicide prevention, bullying and alcohol abuse, complaints from women and men about domestic bullying have reached unprecedented levels because of tensions over unemployment and financial worries.

Researchers also report a marked increase in the risk of suicide among men and women, with women believed particularly prone to risk. Linked directly with unemployment, this is an alarming scenario in a land where over 430,000 people have lost their jobs.

Arguably, this litany of neglect is but the tip of an iceberg. It is a tragic insight into 21st century Ireland where the economy has been brought to its knees by feckless Government policies, reckless bankers and greedy developers. While the state is busy doling out billions to bail out the banks, the most vulnerable members of Irish society are being victimised. It makes a mockery of the Constitutional promise that the state shall care for all its children equally.