Cabinet to get mental hospital plan within months

PROPOSALS FOR a new central mental hospital should be brought to the Cabinet in the next two months, Minister of State for Mental Health, John Moloney, said.

The next step would be to seek funding under a public-private partnership, he added

Speaking at a conference on mental health in Dublin yesterday called the Future for Mental Health, Mr Moloney said no decision on the new facility’s location would be taken until funding was secured.

There has been speculation the hospital would be built at St Ita’s Hospital in Portrane, Dublin, after plans to locate it next to a proposed new prison at Thornton Hall in Dublin were abandoned.

He said he would engage with locals in Portrane if it was selected as the location for the hospital.

Mr Moloney said he had spoken recently to Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Minister for Health Mary Harney and stressed the need to protect mental health funding in the budget. There was no guarantee it would be immune to cuts and he faced a challenge to ensure funding.

“The fact of the matter is that this year we have had an increase in suicide in this country to over 500,” he said. “Quite clearly we need extra resources . . . and it is my responsibility to convince Government of the need for funding.”

The conference heard that no new money was provided for mental health services in 2008 or 2010. Martin Rogan, the HSE’s assistant national director of mental health, said the proportion of the health budget spent on mental health had fallen from 23 per cent in 1966 to 6.7 per cent in 2009 and 5.3 per cent in 2010. Mr Rogan said he did not know what 2011 would bring, but that despite the difficulties in securing funding, work was under way on a number of new mental health projects.

Mr Moloney said attempts to sell land to raise €50 million to fund new mental health services were proving difficult because of the recession. Some €10 million has been generated so far.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin told the conference that mental health assistance should be provided to people who feared they have paedophilic tendencies. He said care should be provided to these people to enable them cope with the problem before it reached crisis point.

“It must be one of the most horrible and fearful secrets a person has to bear in their hearts,” he told the conference. “Preventative care must be an essential dimension.”

He said mental health care should not just be about resorting to drugs or institutionalisation, but should be based in a caring community and that new ways to address the recovery of wholeness of the individual should be sought.

Dr Martin also said he was concerned about the “slowness” in addressing weaknesses in child protection legislation as well as the resources available to the HSE to address inadequacies.

John Lonergan, former governor of Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, told the conference there was a strong link between poverty, mental illness and criminality.

“Most people who end up in prison come from very disadvantaged areas; about 90 per cent of them are poor people,” he said.

“Their environments, I believe, contribute significantly to their development or underdevelopment, [and] as a result of that criminality is an option for them that wouldn’t be if they had .”