Mental Health Commission to discuss Owenacurra this week at Oireachtas committee 

The move, and the commission's likely appearance before the PAC, comes in the wake of relatives' concerns over the centre

The Owenacurra Centre in Midleton.

The Mental Health Commission (MHC) is set to appear before an Oireachtas committee to discuss its role regarding the controversial closure of the Owenacurra mental health facility for the first time this week.

The commission has come under concerted pressure in recent weeks to explain its stance on the closure. Its reports had repeatedly been used as justification for that closure, despite other facilities in Cork receiving poorer compliance ratings from the MHC than the Midleton centre.

The MHC is set to appear before the Oireachtas committee on disability matters on Thursday morning of next week.

Previously the commission had declined to appear before both the Oireachtas health and petitions committees on separate occasions to discuss the closure.

The MHC is also set to appear before the Dáil's public accounts committee (PAC) at some stage in the new year, an appearance which cannot be declined given that committee’s powers of compulsion.

The disability matters committee considers all such matters including Ireland’s implementation of the UN Convention on the rights of people with disabilities.

One of those rights is the right of a person with a disability to live in a community. Advocates for the remaining residents of the Owenacurra centre, which is located at the heart of the Midleton community, say those rights are being denied to former residents of the facility, some of whom have been moved to locked-down wards in remote areas in the wake of the closure announcement.

Owenacurra had been slated for closure in June 2021. However, following a determined protest campaign by its residents, their families and the local community, the facility has never actually shut its doors.

Those family members last week declared themselves to be “distraught” at the MHC’s assertion that the HSE had put in place “appropriate safeguards” to uphold the rights of the people still living at the centre.

The family members said, in a letter to the health committee, that the MHC’s assertion represents “a distortion of our reality as families who remain in a prolonged ordeal of being offered placements that are seriously inadequate in several key respects”.

They claimed that the MHC had declined to engage with the families for more than a year following the closure announcement, only to do so at short notice in the latter half of 2022 after coming under pressure both from the families and via media reporting on the matter.

Asked about the families’ letter, a spokesperson for the MHC said it inspected Owenacurra two weeks ago.

They said that during that inspection the MHC’s inspectors had engaged with residents “who are our primary concern”, adding that the report will eventually be published in full “in line with our policy of openness and transparency".