Irish immigrants living in Britain are urgently in need of help from the Government because they suffer poorer health than people at home. Local statutory services were not meeting their needs, the Association of Health Boards' conference was told yesterday in Bundoran.
Sister Teresa Gallagher, who runs ICAP (Immigrant Counselling Psychotherapy) in London, said the only grant she had received to date from the Irish authorities was £7,000 from the North-Western Health Board.
ICAP has a contract with the Government to provide counselling for people who suffered abuse while in institutional care in Ireland and gets paid on a "per session" basis for this work.
Sister Gallagher said ICAP was cashstrapped and relied on voluntary workers. About £300,000 a year would be needed to make the service viable. Successive studies had highlighted the poor mental health of Irish people living in Britain.
"They were twice as likely as British people to be hospitalised for some form of psychological distress and were 2-1/2 times more likely to suffer from depression. At the end of the day, they are part of our community. We owe it to these people to help them," she said.
Sister Gallagher, a qualified psychotherapist originally from Letterkenny, said the biggest problem among the Irish in Britain was depression. Many people were too embarrassed to seek help.
There were 50-year-old men living alone in bedsits or one-bedroom flats who were unemployed and who felt they had to live out the rest of their lives like that. "When you offer them counselling, they say `do you not think I'm past it?' and there are often tears in their eyes."
She said the counselling offered had proved successful and had changed people's lives. A centre like ICAP was needed because many Irish people in Britain did not use statutory services because they were "culturally insensitive". They often suffered because of "drunken Irishman" stereotypes, she said.
"They feel they are not being heard or understood. They are often misdiagnosed; if they drink, other health problems are often not taken seriously," she said.
The State's responsibility to Irish immigrants in Britain was also raised by Dr Gerry Cowley, a Co Mayo-based doctor recognised for his work in taking elderly people out of institutional care. Dr Cowley said the Safe Home Programme had made it possible for 30 long-term emigrants to return home.
The State owed these people a "moral debt" because they had contributed £300 million over 20 years to Ireland.
Those "emigrant remittances" were documented officially and were equivalent to EU structural funds. "This is a debt, a moral national debt owed by us in justice, not in charity, to be repaid to these magnificent people," he said.
The Safe Home Programme had a waiting list of 354 people who wanted to return from Britain but the money was not available. It was a "national scandal" that they had been forgotten about. Health board members at the conference agreed to recommend to their respective boards to contribute £5,000 each to ICAP.