I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £3,200 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1962, for the Expenses of the Maintenance, etc., of Patients in Dundrum Asylum (8 and 9 Vict., c. 107, and No. 19 of 1945).
I should at the outset explain that, in accordance with the provisions of Section 39 of the Mental Treatment Act, 1961, the title of the institution to which this Supplementary Estimate relates has been changed to "Central Mental Hospital" since 1st April, 1961. However, I am advised that as the original estimate for 1961/62 appears in the Book of Estimates under the title "Dundrum Asylum", the Supplementary should appear under the same title, despite the fact that it is a misnomer.
The need for this Supplementary Grant arises from the fact that expenditure on three Subheads of the Vote will exceed the original provision and such excesses can be met only to a limited extent by savings under other headings of the Vote.
The major portion of the increase is attributable to the operation of the "eighth round" increases in the remuneration of the staff of the hospital. Those increases will cost £2,800 gross in the current year, offset by an increase of £700 in the appropriations in aid, leaving the net increase for salaries and wages at £2,100.
Issues of cigarettes and tobacco to patients account for an increase of £250 approximately. Cigarettes and tobacco seized by the Customs authorities are made available by those authorities to the Hospital and are used to make up in part the patients' ration of those commodities. Receipts from this source have been declining in recent years and in the current year declined rather more than had been anticipated when the estimate was framed. The result has been that greater quantities had to be purchased than had been provided for.
Increased use is now being made in the Hospital of the newer drugs for the treatment of mental illness. This, of course, is beneficial to the patients and eases very considerably the strain on the staff who look after the patients; but it has resulted in the current year in an increase of about £400 in expenditure, which has to be got from this supplementary estimate.
An additional item of expenditure which was not anticipated when the estimate was framed is a sum of £125 involved in the replacement of equipment in the tailoring shop.
An increase of £400 is also anticipated in the expenditure on the victualling of patients, due in the main to an increase in the average number of patients from 88 to 92.
The net increases in expenditure which I have enumerated amount in the aggregate to £3,275. There were other small, casual increases and decreases of a normal character of which account has been taken in framing the supplementary estimate, which, as I have stated, is for a net sum of £3,200.
