On August 4th Raymond Walsh went missing from the Galway University Hospital psychiatric ward – his body was found eight days late. His family are now calling for an external, independent inquiry.

Walsh, 40, from Mervue in Galway admitted himself to the psychiatric unit at Galway University Hospital at the end of last month, citing suicidal thoughts.

Michelle Coyne, Raymond’s sister, spoke to Newstalk Lunchtime today.

“He would be an intensely private person so he didn’t normally talk about these sort of issues so it would have been a big thing for him to check himself in and seek the help,” she said.

“He had been in before, nine years previous, so we knew from that time at least that he wasn’t always well.”

On August 4th, Raymond absconded from the grounds.

“The call came at about half past 12 on the day he went missing which was very soon after he left,” Michelle said.

“He went missing around midday. He was in a high risk bed and they do 15 minute check and at midday he was in the bed and at a quarter past he wasn’t”.

Information on what had happened was hard to come by, Michelle says.

“I visited the facility and they couldn’t give me any information on how he left. It was presented to me that it was unusually for someone to get out ... it transpired in the end that he had escaped over the fence in the garden.”

LISTEN: Michelle Coyne speaks to Newstalk Lunchtime

For days the family searched, but it was eight days before they found Raymond’s body.

“We had no sighting of him so we didn’t know what he was wearing. We had a description from the staff that he may have been wearing a hoodie. The searching was haphazard, we didn’t really know what way to go.

“My brothers they searched from sun up to sun down every day for a week,” she said.

One major delay in the search was a lack of CCTV footage to indicate where Raymond had travelled – a problem caused, Michelle says, by the hospital failing to release the proper CCTV tapes, and only doing so when gardaí requested the tapes.

“Once we finally got an image of him on CCTV after 7 days - Once we had that then police were able to follow the direction of where he was going,” Michelle said.

“Personally there was relief. Having a missing person in the family there’s an awful lot of stress. We all kind of knew immediately that he had killed himself ... when you know what you’re going to find but you can’t move on to the next stage of your grief.”

Michelle said the family feel “let down by the hospital, by the unit.”

“(E)ven security aside, how we were not given the right CCTV to find his body immediately. That it took a garda sergeant to request it before it was given and we were led to believe there was no CCTV on the back of the hospital.

Michael’s case is one of several incidents of patients absconding from the facility in recent months.

“Clearly there’s a problem there,” Michelle said.

“They have told us they’re going to do an internal inquiry. Yesterday they contacted my mother to let her know it’s going to happen in the next few weeks.”

“I think an external independent inquiry is really what’s needed at this stage.”