Department warned of flaw in law on releases
Management at the hospital said 90 amendments were proposed to the Criminal Justice Insanity Act 2006, which deals with people who have broken the law and are mentally ill.
Twelve people suitable for release are being kept in the hospital because of a flaw in the law. Two of these will have their cases heard in the High Court today, where they are seeking a judicial review of a decision to keep them in the Dundrum hospital.
Professor Harry Kennedy, director of the CMH, said the hospital wrote to the department to warn of the problems before the legislation was enacted, and a number of submissions were made in the Oireachtas that were not accepted by the then Justice Minister, Michael McDowell.
“About 90 ways of making this work better were tabled at the time, none of which were accepted by the minister,” said Prof Kennedy.
In response, the department said the CMH was consulted before the legislation was passed.
“As usual with any bill, various amendments are put forward for consideration and are accepted or rejected by the houses of the Oireachtas as they see fit,” a statement said.
The department added that it will shortly be bringing forward proposals to the Government to amend the law.
Prof Kennedy said a shortage of beds in the CMH means there are a number of mentally ill people being detained in prisons who are “too ill” to be there.
“There’s an area in Cloverhill prison which is widely regarded as the busiest acute psychiatric unit in Ireland,” he said.
One man who was detained in a Garda cell for a week because there was no place for him in the CMH has taken his case to the High Court where he is to sue the state for a breach of his human rights.
Prof Kennedy said: “There are forms of mental illness described in Victorian textbooks that are very rarely seen in modern practice, except nowadays in forensic practice because we uniquely find people who have had no treatment at all for a long period of time,” he said.
Prof Kennedy gave the example of extreme psychic disturbance, Catatonia, which “is something most people learn from textbooks. We actually see it.”
He said the current flaw in the law means people in need of beds cannot access them.
“If we have long-term people in the limited number of beds we have, then those beds are not available to other people that might better need the beds. So being able to move people on when it is right and safe to do so obviously would make the system work a lot better,” he said.
Meanwhile, new figures show that 329 people with intellectual disabilities are being inappropriately accommodated in psychiatric hospitals, even though they do not have a mental illness.
This is despite a government commitment in its mental health policy document A Vision for Change to end this practice by 2006 and place those with intellectual disabilities in more suitable, community-based and modern services.
