Hospital no better than Mandela's cell, says Tánaiste

TÁNAISTE and Health Minister Mary Harney last night compared the way the State treats patients at the Central Mental Hospital with conditions meted out to Nelson Mandela by the Apartheid regime.

Ms Harney said she was appalled at what she had witnessed during a "nightmare" visit to the facility this week.

"The Central Mental Hospital is just appalling. The worst of my nightmare fears were realised.

"There is a very high standard of care, but it is not an appropriate place to house citizens of this country," she said.

"I have been to South Africa and seen Nelson Mandela's prison cell and it is no worse than what I saw yesterday. It's a shocking thing and building a new facility is a priority," Ms Harney told the Oireachtas health committee.

Mr Mandela wrote movingly of his 27-year captivity on Robben Island in his memoirs Long Walk to Freedom.

He was kept in a five metre square cell and forced to sleep on a straw mat on the stone floor. The prison is now a national memorial and museum.

The Government's mental health watchdog found the CMH to have "seriously unsatisfactory conditions" in a report by the Inspector of Mental Hospitals, Professor Dermot Walsh, last autumn. But the Government's decision to build a new €73 million Central Mental Hospital on the same site as Mountjoy Prison has drawn widespread criticism.

Ministers defended the plans, saying 97% of people who go to the CMH come from jails.

Ms Harney also used her appearance before the Oireachtas committee to strongly push plans to open up private beds in public hospitals for general use in order to solve the health service capacity crisis.

She brushed aside claims from opposition TDs that the move represented a "cash cow" for private operators.

The Tánaiste agreed with concerns raised by Labour health spokesperson Liz McManus that the country desperately needed to "grow more doctors".

Ms Harney warned that a "considerable shortage" of doctors was emerging in Ireland.

Of the 900 medical graduations this year, only 300 were from the Republic or the rest of the EU.

Long-term planning was needed to try and turn the situation around over the next decade, Ms Harney said.