Galway Bay fm newsroom - The HSE has spoken out in defence of its mental health services at UHG after a series of recent controversies.
It follows reports of patients with mental health issues being turned away from the hospital.
The matter has been discussed this week at a meeting of the Regional Health Forum.
Forum member and city councillor Padraig Conneely challenged the HSE to explain why vulnerable patients were being turned away from UHG.
Chief officer Tony Canavan says reports that patients had been kept in a Garda cell or told to join the Darkness into Light walk made for difficult reading.
However, he said he could not comment on individual cases, but all patients who attend the hospital are assessed by a liaison team including members of the psychiatric team.
He says in all cases, a clinical decision is made on whether they should be admitted to the hospital, and in general, there are available bed spaces in the UHG psychiatric unit.
Mr Canavan said a psychiatric consultant is available to patients 24/7 to deal with any patients who attend the hospitals emergency unit at night time or in the early hours of the morning.
In the meantime, work is continuing on the delivery of a new 50 bed mental health unit at UHG to replace the old building, which will be finished this Autumn.
The 13.2 million euro state of the art facility will not provide any additional bed spaces, but the HSE has reiterated that capacity is not an issue in the Galway psychiatric service.
The executive says it's pushing to move mental health services out of acute hospital settings into community based facilities.
