Where are the ten extra beds promised for the Drogheda Department of Psychiatry (DDOP) at Crosslanes? That’s the question Sinn Féin TD Ruairí Ó Murchú has asked the HSE this week.
Six months after Louth County Council granted planning permission for the ten-bed extension at the Drogheda site, there has been no commencement of building work, and no sign of it starting either.
Added to this delay, Deputy Ó Murchú said he is also concerned by information he has received that suggests that there were more than 40 vacancies in mental health services in the Louth-Meath area, but these ‘seemed to have magically turned into just 13 vacancies’ without the posts being filled.
Deputy Ó Murchú said: ‘It is my understanding that there were more than 40 nursing vacancies in the wider mental health services in Louth and Meath but now, following the lifting of the recruitment moratorium, these have been turned into just 13 empty positions.
‘It is my understanding that employees who were acting up in another role were made permanent in these roles, but their previous jobs were cut or disappeared. It is very worrying.
‘And these are just the nursing vacancies – if you add in the other disciplines where there are shortages, then, I’m told, the number is higher’.
And his colleague, Cllr. Joanna Byrne highlighted how, in a June 2023 inspection of the Crosslanes facility, the Mental Health Commission found there was ‘an inadequate number of appropriately trained nursing staff to provide safe care and treatment, which meant the numbers of and skill mix of staff were not appropriate to the assessed needs of residents in the approved centre.
‘There were 49 occasions (day shifts and three night shifts) since January 2023 when the approved centre’s nursing staff was below the required staff ratio’.
The report also found that operational risks outlined by heads of disciplines ‘noted difficulty in recruitment, training and inpatient bed capacity for the catchment areas of Louth and Meath’.
Deputy Ó Murchú said: ‘The extension to DDOP at Crosslanes has been promised for a long time, but six months after the granting of planning, nothing has happened and I want to know why.
‘This should be an urgent, priority project for the HSE, but it hasn’t moved. This, on top of there is the issue with the vacancies – how many are being advertised versus how many are really needed. The Louth-Meath area has one of the lowest mental health bed provision in the State.
‘Furthermore, there continues to be a need for a 24-hour psychiatry service at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital that would allow urgent assessments and referrals into mental health services’.
‘Staff working in mental health services are under pressure and that pressure is exacerbated by the situation with the unfilled vacancies’.
Cllr. Joanna Byrne said: ‘Sinn Féin recently launched our mental healthcare plans and want to develop universal access to community-based therapy, counselling, and support, alongside addressing the crisis in emergency, urgent, and acute services.
‘The big difference between Sinn Féin’s plan and Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael’s approach is that we will move away from decades of crisis management and underinvestment to community-based, proactive care. This would be backed up by multi-annual funding, long-term planning, and workforce planning’.
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