Get on with it - Mental health services

OUR health service confounds even the most determined efforts to see the glass half full on a far too frequent basis and today’s report that the HSE had, last month, to defer plans to open a €15m psychiatric unit at Cork University Hospital after unions voiced concerns over staffing and health and safety is, sadly, another such instance.

The badly need unit is detached from the main hospital building and this is at the root of some of the objections. Leaving the objections aside, even if some of them seem bizarre and unsustainable, this seems a failure of management and communication, issues that are hardly strangers to our tottering health services yet they continue to play such a negative, blocking role in our hospitals.

Even though the Psychiatric Nurses’ Association and Siptu voiced concerns of the development two years ago their response seems disproportionate. This service is so badly needed, a life-or-death issue possibly in some cases, that every effort must be made to get the facility up an running and if a review is needed later then so be it.