There is a complete lack of facilities in Irish hospitals to cater for children and adolescents presenting with suicidal tendencies and the Irish Association of Directors of Nursing and Midwifery called yesterday for this gap in services to be urgently addressed.
Ms Geraldine Regan, the association's president, said children were arriving in hospital accident and emergency departments in distress in the middle of the night but there were no "suicide proof beds" in paediatric hospitals for them.
At her association's centenary conference in Tullamore, Co Offaly, Ms Regan also said if proper therapeutic intervention was not provided for children and adolescents at risk due to social and psychiatric problems, many of them would become dysfunctional and homeless adults.
She also criticised the over-reliance by the Irish health service on overseas nurses, who now account for about one-fifth of the nursing workforce.
"I think we have to reduce this reliance on overseas nurses because they are a highly mobile population that tends to follow international labour market demand," she said.
Furthermore she revealed that hospitals continued to face nursing shortages, with many hospitals encountering "major" problems finding nurses for specialist areas, particularly intensive care and theatre.
"There is a worldwide shortage of intensive care nurses," Ms Regan said.
In her own hospital, Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, enormous efforts had been made to recruit intensive care nurses around the world but the hospital still has 17 vacancies.
"We have gone to the four corners of the world to recruit nurses but we still have shortages despite the enormous efforts which have been made."
The hospital was short about 30 intensive care nurses last year when controversy erupted over the postponement of heart surgery on two-year-old Limerick girl Róisín Ruddle due to the fact that there would not be enough intensive care nurses to care for her after her operation.
The child was sent home and died shortly afterwards.
The conference also called for the extension of the national breast-screening programme to women over the age of 65. In addition, it sought an ombudsman for older persons and a new approach to dealing with patients with complex conditions who were on waiting lists and not suitable to be treated under the National Treatment Purchase Fund.