andMr. Connolly asked the Minister for Health if he is aware of the proposed closure of two wards in St. Fintan's Hospital, Portlaoise; if, in view of his stated committment to the care of the mentally ill, he will now make a special financial allocation available to the Midland Health Board, for the purpose of keeping the two wards open, thereby ensuring that the minimum disturbance and anxiety is occasioned to the long-stay patients in the hospital; and if he will make a statement on the future role of St. Fintan's Hospital in the delivery of psychiatric hospital care and services to patients in the Midland Health Board area.
Written Answers. - Midland Psychiatric Services.
126.
I am aware of the Midland Health Board's proposal to close two wards for elderly or psycho-geriatric patients, at St. Fintan's Hospital, Portlaoise this year. This will be facilitated by the board's success in being able to discharge some patients to more suitable accommodation in the community and to transfer others to more appropriate geriatric institutional care in the area. The relocation of patients to facilities, especially community based facilities, which more appropriately meet their particular needs is clearly in line with the recommendations of the report Psychiatric Services — Planning for the Future published last year. It is also in line with the Midland Health Board's own plans to decentralise services currently provided in their psychiatric hospitals, including St. Fintan's to locally based psychiatric teams.
The development of the kind of community orientated psychiatric service recommended in Psychiatric Services — Planning for the Future, and now widely accepted as the best way of treating most mental illness, will inevitably mean a continuation of the already well established trend towards a diminishing role for the psychiatric hospital, and its centralised institutional style of providing care.