Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation Dail Éireann — 2024-02-15 ============================================================ Mark Ward (SF), Dublin Mid-West People in their thousands are presenting to emergency departments in mental health crises because of the lack of mental health care in our communities. If they are lucky enough to be seen in emergency departments, they are then referred back into the community for treatment. An average of 4,500 people are so referred every year. There are huge vacancies in our community mental health services. I will give the example of my area of Clondalkin. I only got this response a few days ago. We have vacancies for one area director of nursing, two clinical nurse managers, three clinical nurse specialists, two community mental health nurses, one advanced nurse practitioner and five staff nurses. Does the Tánaiste think this level of vacancy is acceptable? What will he do about it? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-02-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:40+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-02-15