Sir, - The Association of Psychiatric Nurse Managers read with disappointment the report by Frank Kilfeather (Irish Times, May 1st) regarding the decision adopted by the board of the Adelaide & Meath Hospital, Dublin, incorporating the National Children's Hospital, to request Mr Brian Cowen, Minister for Health and Children, to delay until August 1999 the transfer, planned to take place in 50 days' time, of the current acute in-patient facility at St Loman's Psychiatric Hospital to a purpose-built specialist facility on the Tallaght general hospital complex.
Such a facility as Tallaght is in contrast with the institutional provision of the past, and is an essential part of the alternative community approach currently advanced. This approach sets out to design services and to provide treatments which wrap around, rather than divide and separate, the person needing help and support. The specialist facility provided on the Tallaght complex should not be used for any other purpose. It is now urgently required to provide for this aspect of care and support which the people of West Dublin accessing mental health services need and expect.
This association seriously urges the Minister for Health and Children to disregard the recommendation adopted and to proceed with this aspect of the Tallaght development as planned without delay. If Tallaght Hospital is to be the monument to excellence it aspires, it needs not only to embrace the ethos of the various communities on this island, it needs also to consider the differing needs of the people and the care groups it is there to serve. - Yours, etc., Patrick Brosnan
Honorary Secretary, Association of Psychiatric Upper Sarsfield Street, Nenagh, Co Tipperary,.
Israel At 50
Sir, - Ambassador Gabay's eulogy to the state that employs him (April 28th) was predictably devoid of any hint that the norms of international law - or indeed the laws of humanity - apply to the government of Israel. By way of contrast, here are some questions recently posed by one of the world's most respected Jewish intellectuals, George Steiner (The Observer, February 22nd):
"How can a modern, secular nation claim for its. . . basis an archaic promise of sacred territoriality, a contract with a God in whom so many do not believe? Can the Shoah be used forever to underwrite the legality of repossession and the expulsion of the Arabs?. . . Is Israel worth the torture of another human being?. . . Could our true mission be that not of a nation-state, as abominable or brave. . . as any other, but that of guests (be they unwelcome) among men? To raise such a question. . . is to inquire into the very meaning of Israel, a meaning far less universal than is that of Judaism." - Yours, etc., Raymond Deane
Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.