Tax breaks for private investors willing to build mental hospitals are being considered by the Government.
The proposal, which is favoured by Minister for Health Mary Harney, is being examined for this year's Budget. Ms Harney said yesterday that she only recently became aware that mental healthcare facilities were not included in the scheme, which allows tax breaks for the building of private hospitals and clinics. This was discriminatory, she said.
The plan could see the State's proposed new Central Mental Hospital being built, in part or in full, by private investors. "The tax allowance concept for private facilities is only recent and I think we do need to look at the possibility of expanding it to the mental health area. I would like to do that.
"Obviously at the end of the day it's a matter for the Minister for Finance, but it would be something I would welcome, its expansion to include mental health," she told The Irish Times.
"I think we shouldn't exclude the mental health area from the tax allowances. I think that is discriminatory," she added.
She recently discussed the plan, which "made emminent sense" with Minister for Finance Brian Cowen.
Ms Harney was speaking following the opening of a new €24 million centre for elderly patients with dementia and psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia in Rathfarnham, Dublin. The Bloomfield Care Centre, built by the Quakers, has 65 beds but plans to provide a further 50 by late 2006, if State funding is provided to subvent their efforts.
Drewry Pearson, a member of the Bloomfield development committee, said 60 per cent of bed days in acute hospitals were used by persons over 65 years and up to 15 per cent of them would need services like those offered by Bloomfield. The services at the centre would be more appropriate to their needs and cost 70 per cent less than care in an acute hospital, he said.
He estimated that if 50 of its beds were used by the State for patients now inappropriately accommodated in acute hospitals, the Exchequer could save €5 million annually.
Ms Harney said it was mainly over 65s who were in acute hospitals but they shouldn't be there unless they needed to be because "hospitals are dangerous places".
"We need alternative facilities . . . we need facilities that are provided by the State directly or facilities that are acquired by the State. The State doesn't always have to be the provider of every single facility," she said. She signalled she would shortly be publishing details of a plan "to develop a substantial number" of private beds across the State.
Over half the population had private health insurance, she said, and 2,500 beds in public hospitals were being used by private patients. There were "alternatives" so that public beds in public hospitals could be used more appropriately.