Nurses have warned that the closure of a sub-acute psychiatric unit at St James's Hospital next week will seriously impact the provision of mental health services in the Dublin area.
The Psychiatric Nurses Association (PNA) blamed the planned closure of the 16-bed unit on a staffing crisis and said there had been a failure to recruit and retain sufficient psychiatric nursing staff to maintain services.
PNA General Secretary Peter Hughes said that the 16 beds equate to almost 50% of the admission beds for the St James’s service and the catchment area of 134,000 people.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he said: "We think this is a very serious and worrying development because previously practice over time when there were staff shortages was the curtailment of services.
"But here we're seeing the actual closure of service. It's inconceivable when the demand for mental health services is increasing that instead of expanding and developing services the HSE is closing services, which is going to have serious consequences for patients, families and the wider community."
Mr Hughes said that a survey last year showed that there were 700 vacancies and, he said, there is no indication that that has improved.
"We have the situation last May where almost 50% of the beds for Linn Dara child and adolescent unit in Cherry Orchard closed. We were promised they would reopen in the September. We're now 15 months later, and there's no prospect, no prospect whatsoever at this stage of those beds reopening.
"This is a similar catchment area. It's just about seven to eight miles down the road from Cherry Orchard, and here we have almost 50% of admission beds being closed for adults."
In relation to the forensic services, Mr Hughes said there are 63 beds that cannot be opened because of the staffing crisis.
"And we have a new CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) unit, a 20-bed CAMHS unit, in the new children's hospital and again there is no prospect of those being opened".
The Health Service Executive said the closures at Saint James's Hospital and in Cherry Orchard are due to staffing issues.
In a statement, HSE Community Healthcare Dublin South, Kildare and West Wicklow said "the temporary reduction in beds is not related to any funding difficulties, but to the challenges in hiring and retaining the nursing staff needed to operate these units at full capacity, while maintaining the necessary standards of care and safety for patients".
It added that "both centres ... will continue to process those being referred for inpatient admission" and "are working closely with the other HSE and HSE funded inpatient services and private providers to mitigate the situation and to facilitate admissions" where possible.
"The situation is being reviewed on a constant basis, with the intention of returning to full capacity as soon as that is possible.
"The health services continue to face challenges in recruiting necessary staff," the statement said, adding that "the HSE is currently running national and international recruitment campaigns for psychiatric nursing staff" and is "also seeking to recruit from graduate programmes".
Just 43 CAMHS beds operational - PNA
PNA General Secretary Peter Hughes said that 43 CAMHS beds are operational in Ireland.
"It's totally inexcusable. It's not acceptable and it's been an ongoing crisis which we have been highlighting at Government level, at HSE level, at Department of Health level for many years now.
"But there has been a complacency in addressing the issue.
"They need to look at innovative ways to address the crisis. They need to look at it from a short term, medium term and a long term, and address the issues and deal with it as a crisis.
"It has not been dealt with as a crisis."
Mr Hughes said that while the student intake remains steady at around 430 per year, "it is obviously not enough".
"We have recently seen from the nursing registration body that when they did an analysis of the amount of nurses practicing in psychiatric there's 7,000, but of those 7,000 over 3000 are over 50 years of age.
"So, this is a problem that's not going to go away. It needs to be addressed.
"We need to train, we need to have a targeted recruitment campaign and we need to compete with the private sector and with overseas, particularly Australia and Canada."
