Costs are rising and so are addictions: What does the future hold for Cuan Mhuire?

Mick Clifford takes a look at the unique services of Cuan Mhuire, that assist people suffering from addiction. The growing pressure to finance their efforts and how their work saves the State expensive treatments services and facilities.

The courtyard at Cuan Mhuire in Bruree.  On the average night there are nearly 500 people sleeping in a Cuan Mhuire facility of one sort or another.   Picture; Eddie O'Hare

Brendan was a handy footballer. He did well for his club, featured at intercounty level for a while. A bad injury brought his playing career to a shuddering halt. He needed something to fill the gaping hole where used to be his focus, his identity, since he was a small child.

“I’d been good at it and successful,” he says. “I had a grand childhood, normal, supportive parents. Then I picked up the injury when I was 17. Football was taken from me. I used to get my enjoyment there. I had low self esteem but football took care of that for me. So I turned to the social scene to get my kicks and it didn’t stay social for too long.” Alcohol, and then drugs, did the job for a while, then he started getting into trouble with the law. “I moved Australia when I was 19 but I brought my addiction and my head with me,” he says. “I got into more trouble over there and ended up deported back home. Back here it was more of the same.” In the end he faced up to his issues through the direction of a judge. “The judge let me out on bail to do a treatment so I ended up here.” 

Here is the Cuan Mhuire centre in Bruree, Co Limerick, based half a mile outside the town, in the grounds of a former mansion. It is difficult to envisage a further reach from the chaos that most of the clients are experiencing before they arrive, than this sanctuary, set among slow rising hills in the middle of nowhere.

The entrance to Cuan Mhuire in Bruree. One of five treatment centres run by the charity across the island of Ireland. Along with eight homes offering supported accommodation.  Picture: Eddie O'Hare

Over the course of a 20-week programme Brendan managed to get his life back. The programme is based loosely around the 12 steps to recovery model but also has its own features. Apart from the meetings and therapy sessions, there is always plenty to do in the attached grounds. There are opportunities to train in catering, woodwork and horticulture or get involved in the garden centre. What to some on the outside might appear to be little more than physical endeavour is in the context of addiction vital repair work, connecting with basic tools of life that were often discarded or lost on the downward journey.

It did the job for Brendan. When he completed the programme he moved to a transition house run by Cuan Mhuire in Cork. Recovering addicts often dread the cliff edge return to life that comes at the end of a residential programme. Here, room is made for transitioning back into what is a strange and often frightening world.

“If there is a good programme but somebody hasn’t a place to go they end up back on the streets often,” says Sr Agnes (Fitzgerald), who has overseen the Bruree centre for the last 40 years. “There needs to be continuity for those who don’t have a home to go to and for those who might well do but feel they can’t go back there if they are to stay well.” Brendan agrees. “I could have gone home but I’d be back with the same people I knew before I came here,” he says. “People, places and things, they are what can do for you. I needed to get away from it and in Cork there is a good support network, a lot of meetings and that kind of thing.” He’s back working, off down the road towards fulfilling his potential and, apart from that, contributing in a positive way to society. None of it is easy and the work of recovery stretches into years but the prize is immeasurable in terms of human life.

Organisation

Bruree is one of five treatment centres operated by Cuan Mhuire around the country, including one Farnanes outside Cork City and in Newry in Northern Ireland. The group also has eight homes offering supported accommodation. On the average night there are nearly 500 people sleeping in a Cuan Mhuire facility of one sort or another. The success rate, measured in terms of completion of the programme is high for this sector, coming in at between 76pc and 80pc of those who commence the programme.

Sr Anges Fitzgerald, who oversees  the treatment centre at Cuan Mhuire in Bruree. She says, “There needs to be continuity for those who don’t have a home to go to and for those who might well do but feel they can’t go back there if they are to stay well.” Picture: Eddie O'Hare

Sr Agnes puts a lot of it down to her faith, and particularly the intervention of The Blessed Virgin. But whether one believes or not, the results speak for themselves. Rescuing people from addiction, providing them with the tools to manage in a world from which they fled, is painstaking work. Cuan Mhuire is the biggest private treatment provider in the state, but there are others, all doing vital work that is largely unseen except by those affected and their families.

It wasn’t easy to build up such a service over the years, but today the organisation is facing one of its biggest challenges. Costs of all sort have increased in recent years and some of the operation may become unviable. A subvention from the HSE has not increased at all despite the ballooning costs. It remains to be seen how long Cuan Mhuire can continue like this without some drastic intervention.

“Our costs have gone up exponentially and I just don’t know if we’ll be able to carry on,” says the chair of Cuan Mhuire, Paul O’Donoghue.

 “We provide 23,000 detox bed nights a year and 127,000 treatment bed nights, it’s a huge amount. And the subvention in one of our centres is, for instance, four euro a bed per night. We simply can’t continue like that.” 

 “You won’t see organisations like our protesting outside Leinster House. The nature of the work means that we have a private, discreet set up but the politicians in particular need to be made aware of how real this problem is. We don’t want to close any facility but the financial constraints are becoming unbearable.” 

 Trevor McCarthy, addition counsellor in the courtyard at Cuan Mhuire in Bruree. Picture; Eddie O'Hare

Epic tale

The beginnings of Cuan Mhuire are straight from the pages of a Hollywood scriptwriter. The woman who became Sr Consilio Fitzgerald began life on a farm in Brosna, north Kerry, one of a family of six. After school she trained as a nurse, joined the Sisters of Mercy and was dispatched to Athy, Co Kildare. While working in the local county home she encountered people she would come to describe as “men of the road”. These unmoored individuals travelled from pillar to post looking for a bed for the night. Pretty soon, through talking to them, she realised that alcohol, for the greater part, was at the root of most of their problems.

One day at mass there was notice of an open AA meeting in Carlow. Sister Consilio asked for permission to attend and so had her first introduction to alcoholism and how it was possible to treat it. The Mother Superior gave her permission to set up a kind of drop-in centre in a nearby disused dairy. Word spread, more and more arrived at her doorstep, and before long she decided that a proper facility was required.

“She went about setting up a treatment centre outside Athy,” Sr Agnes says. “This was in 1966. She was a young nun. She went to an auction with no money but she had a strong belief that it would work because God wanted it done, that these were people who needed help and she believed Our Lady would help.” Somebody was certainly looking after her. She bought the property and the money began to come in afterwards. Her brother John came from Brosna to direct the construction of the new centre.

Through the late sixties and right through the seventies the Cuan Mhuire centre in Athy was one of the few places independently providing a level of treatment for alcoholism. Even within the existing health services, such treatment was poor and uneven. “There was no connection with the health authorities for long time,” Sr Agnes says. “This was a journey of faith.” By 1980, the centre was unable to meet demand, and Consilio noticed that she was receiving a large constituency from south Munster.

“There was a man from Bruree on the programme in Athy and he told her about this place being up for sale,” Sr Agnes says. “So she came down here and ended up buying it and just as before she did so with no money but was sure it would come.” And it did.

Staff member Ted Riordan working at the garden centre at Cuan Mhuire in Bruree. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

The house was built in the 19th century by a local landowner, John Gubbins, who also had a stud farm. Since then it passed down through various wealthy hands, including members of the British aristocracy, until Consilio came across it. Once again her brother John left Brosna to do his bit in putting a shape on the place. The stables attached to the house were once home to racehorses who did their stuff across these islands. Today it houses people having their lives repaired.

Two years later, Sr Agnes arrived in Bruree. She was the third member of the Fitzgerald family to put the shoulder to the wheel in tackling addiction. She had followed Consilio into the Sisters of Mercy and was based in Ardee, Co Louth where she taught in the local school.

“Consilio was stressed out, she had this place bought but nobody to run it,” Sr Agnes says. “So I got permission from Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiach at the time to come here for nine months. I knew nothing about addiction when I arrived here but I did know that people need to be helped. At the end of the nine months I went back teaching for a little while but then I came back and I’ve been here since.” From such beginnings, the Bruree centre now has 130 beds, including 30 detox beds. The latest extension which is well underway will increase the capacity to 145 beds. Since then centres have been opened in Athenry Co Galway, Farnanes and Newry.

Staff member Rose Brosnan working at the garden centre at Cuan Mhuire in Bruree. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

Help for all

Anna is a mother of two who found herself sinking into alcoholism as she approached middle age. “I had attempted suicide, I knew something was wrong but it was alcohol, nothing else. That’s where I was at even though I had a family at home and all. I knew I needed a programme, to be removed from society for a while,” she says.

She had heard of Cuan Mhuire but had dismissed such places as being exclusively for those who had lost everything, not unlike the men of the road Consilio had encountered half a century earlier.

“The first thing I learned in here was that nobody is different from anybody else, but I learned so much through the modules, from the staff, the counsellors. It has completely changed my life. Coming in here was the best decision I ever made.” 

Sr Agnes points out that while those in the throes of addiction are the primary focus of treatment, their families also require serious attention. 

“We have always had a big concern for families of those affected,” she says. “We organise family support and after care support groups. You will often find that families are as stressed out as the person in addiction.” 

Inevitably, in the secular world in which we now live, some would have questions about a centre that is still being run by members of a religious order. Getting better doesn’t mean getting God. So does the programme push people towards the church?

“I wouldn’t have a notion how many Catholics or non-Catholics we have here,” Sr Agnes says. “We have mass whenever we can but if a person doesn’t go in for that, that’s fine. There is absolutely nothing forced on you. But I have seen people who come in and saying straight out they want nothing to do with religion and then the next thing you’re at mass and they’re up there doing a reading. That’s up to everybody themselves.” 

One of the dining rooms at Cuan Mhuire in Bruree. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

“We had a Muslim guy on the programme with us when I was here,” Brendan pipes in. “He got on the finest. Doesn’t matter to anybody.” The relegation of religion in society as a whole has been a feature of recent decades, but so also has the age profile of those who require treatment.

“When I started here people who came through the gates were usually in their late forties or older and alcohol was the only problem,” Sr Agnes says. 

“But they are getting younger. A big issue even around those addicted to alcohol is that they are also using cocaine. We have a long waiting list for the drug treatment and a lot of people are coming in now well under the age of thirty. ”In 2019 – the last year before the skewing of figures due to the pandemic – one third of people accessing treatment in Cuan Mhuire were under 34-years of age.

The demand, according to Sr Agnes, has never been greater, but whether or not the model can continue depends on how it is funded. 

“Can you imagine the burden on the health service there would be if organisations like Cuan Mhuire didn’t exist?" Paul O’Donoghue says. “We feel we need to be supported in a far more realistic way. Our whole further depends on it.”