Sir, - Commenting on the serious situation regarding mentally ill patients in our prisons Drapier (The Irish Times, April 21st) refers to my many unsuccessful attempts to get this issue addressed - although, to give him his due, Mr John O'Donoghue, Minister for Justice, did recently admit in the Seanad that the situation was unsatisfactory.
Bad as things are now, they will probably be even worse if the Mental Health Bill before the Dail is enacted without considerable amendment.
On December 15th, 1999, the Fine Gael members used their private members' time in the Seanad to discuss the Inspector of Mental Hospital's Report for 1998. The Government published the Mental Health Bill, 1999 at the same time.
A White Paper entitled "A New Mental Health Act" had been published in 1995 after much consultation and contained an important chapter entitled "Mentally Disordered Persons before the Courts and in Custody". Many improvements in the treatment of mentally ill people who are brought before the courts as well as those in custody were suggested; but to my astonishment, when the then Minister for Health, Mr Brian Cowen TD, produced the Bill, these important issues were not addressed.
When I spoke that evening I said: "The Bill is quite limited and it is difficult to know why it took almost 20 years to produce it. The Bill deals with the issue of involuntary admission"; and I went on to say that we had to do this as quickly as possible before we were brought before the European Court of Human Rights.
In his reply to the debate the Minister said: "I noticed that Senator Henry regards it as a small Bill. It contains 73 sections and deals with the protection of patients' rights, something which I regard as a priority in the context of legislative response to transform and modernise mental health services".
I hope readers will understand that it was not the length of the Bill which troubled me, but its lack of content. The present Mental Health Act 1945 has nearly 300 sections but it is inadequate, too; that is why we have a new Bill before the Dail.
The new Bill, in Section 7, specifically rules out the involuntary admission to an approved centre of persons suffering from a personality disorder, who are socially deviant or addicted to drugs or intoxicants. While no one wants to see the return to a "locked ward" situation, I wish the Bill gave some indication as to what is to happen to such people. They will, especially if they are poor, probably end up involved in conflict with the law, appear before the courts and join the large number of people with mental illness in our prisons, as pointed out by the recent Irish Penal Reform Trust report.
Why has the chapter on these vulnerable people in the White Paper been ignored in writing the new Bill? Is there a turf war going on between the Department of Health and the Department of Justice to see who can do least for them? In the Central Mental Hospital there are 40 rooms in a block which was nearly built over 15 years ago and has never been occupied. Why are there mentally ill people in Mountjoy, which everyone agrees is not a suitable place to treat them, and not in these beds?
The Dail committee stage of the Bill ended on October 26th, 2000 and the report stage has not come before the Dail yet, six months later. Has someone realised these people are important and a new section is being introduced? Or will we have to wait for it to arrive in the Seanad to address this serious omission? - Yours, etc.,
Senator Mary Henry, MD, Seanad Eireann, Dublin 2.