Lack of funds and hiring ban hitting mental health plan
By Liz Lockhart
A lack of financial resources, a moratorium on staff recruitment and a lack of dedicated corporate 
leadership has hit The State’s flagship plan for reforming mental health services in Ireland.
The independent monitoring group on the ‘A Vision for Change’ strategy said in its 2010 report that mental health services are suffering disproportionate losses in posts, compared to other sectors of the health service.
It noted that 1,000 registered psychiatric nurses retired in 2009 and 2010 and a further 1,100 will be eligible to retire by 2012. The report recommended continuing the current derogation on the recruitment moratorium for psychiatric nurses.
The plan to establish fully staffed community mental health teams or specialist mental health services has been hit by staffing shortages and consequently has made little progress.
According to the report this lack of development undermines significantly the full implementation of the model of services described in ‘A Vision for Change’.
In 2006, under the previous government, A Vision for Change was published as its plan to modernise antiquated mental health services in Ireland. Its aim is to establish 99 community teams across the country and recommends appropriate staffing levels across all mental health services.
Progress in development of new youth and adult inpatient nits in Dublin, Cork and Galay and the imminent closure of outdated mental health units in Wexford, Dublin, Tipperary and several other areas was welcomed in the monitoring report.
It also welcomed the commitment to reduce spending on mental health services by only 1.8% which is proportionally less than the cuts to other health services.
Highlighted in the report was a lack of dedicated corpora leadership in the service. It said that there was an urgent need for a full directorate of mental healthcare services with the director reporting directly to the chief executive of the Health Service Executive.
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