The Workers’ Party has described the findings of the Mental Health Commission as “utterly shocking” and said the report proves that Mental Health services in this country are the poor relation of an already crumbling health service.
Cllr. Ted Tynan (WP)
Workers’ Party Cork Councillor Ted Tynan said that the report, which found that the level of service in Mental health in Ireland is “unsafe and substandard” and “breaches the fundamental rights of a vulnerable group of people” was a damning indictment of the present government and all of its predecessors.
The report highlighted a string of serious issues and shortcomings in the state’s Mental Health service including inappropriate admission of children into adult mental health units, inadequate staffing, use of physical restraints, dirty and inadequate premises and lack of proper regulatory oversight.
Cllr. Tynan said the report described a system that belonged in the distant past and had no place in a country which was earlier this year ranked by the International Monetary Fund as the 5th wealthiest country in the world in terms of per capita GDP.
The Workers’ Party councillor said “In recent years people in this country have been numbed by scandal after scandal, mostly emanating from political and societal failures of the past. Yet here in 2018 a government appointed body, the Mental Health Commission, has once again put this country to shame by exposing a system that exists in the here and now and which is failing vulnerable people today and every day”