A shortage of suitable accommodation for elderly long-term psychiatric patients is costing the Eastern Health Board millions of pounds a year.
It is paying more than £800,000 annually to St Patrick's private psychiatric hospital alone to accommodate 25 patients for whom no suitable accommodation can be found in the community.
An EHB spokesman said last night it was difficult to calculate the total amount being paid to private hospitals and nursing homes to provide long-stay accommodation for these patients because of the "complex formula" involved. However an EHB source said the cost of accommodation at St Patrick's was about £90 a day.
Another source said it would be cheaper and more appropriate to provide community-based care for this group.
According to the 1997 report of the Inspector for Mental Hospitals, Mr Dermot Walsh, the numbers occupying beds in Dublin's hospitals are affecting the service for acute psychiatric cases. The report, which was published yesterday, says the hospitals most affected are those with large low-income catchment areas, such as St James's, Beaumont, the Mater and James Connolly Memorial Hospital, Blanchardstown.
St James's has a catchment population with one of the highest rates of mental illness in Dublin. Its psychiatric unit provides a quality-based level of care, says the report, "but due to a lack of community alternatives to hospitalisation in this service, there has been a build-up of long-stay patients both in the unit itself and in St Patrick's Hospital, where approximately 25 patients not undergoing active rehabilitation are being paid for by the Eastern Health Board".
The situation on the north side of the city is also critical. The report says a 60-bed psychiatric unit planned for Beaumont Hospital has still not opened, the psychiatric unit at the James Connolly Memorial Hospital "is unsatisfactory, both in size and quality", and the 15 beds at the Mater Hospital can serve only a small area.
St Ita's Hospital in Portrane, although based in north Co Dublin, takes most of its acute patients from the Dublin north-west catchment area "due to inadequate admission facilities in James Connolly Memorial Hospital".