David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I do not believe she is the slightest bit comfortable here. While she is always welcome here and is a good Minister and conscientious person, she looks thoroughly miserable. Her body language is wretched and she looks ashamed and miserable. I feel really sorry for her. I believe she is in a very difficult position and that her heart is on the side of the patients and the people.

Senator MacSharry made a passionate speech. It was splendid. However, the person I honour most here is Senator Gilroy who spoke from the heart and told the truth, which is what we want to hear. We do not want partisan point scoring. It is for that reason I consider the Sinn Féin amendment rubbish. It is tripe and part of a ritual. What makes people cynical is that we are not telling the truth. We need to tell the truth and face the truth. If money is an issue, let us say so. Let us face what our European partners, in robbing and stripping us during our financial collapse, which was their fault, have done to this country.

As it happens, I will be supporting the Fianna Fáil motion. I pick and choose. Sometimes I support the Government, sometimes I support the Opposition and sometimes I support the Independents. The motion quotes the inspector of mental health services, who stated that mental health services were stagnant and perhaps had slipped backwards in 2012. That is what he said, yet, with unbelievable gall, the Government motion "notes the 2012 report of the inspector of mental health which highlights the continued progress". That is rubbish. How can people believe in politicians if the director of mental health says it is stagnant or going backwards but the Government says there is progress? It is an absolute tissue of lies.

The amendment refers to the ongoing closure of unsuitable psychiatric institutions and the moving of patients to more appropriate community-based facilities. That is rubbish. In fact, suitable psychiatric institutions are being closed and patients are being stuck out and left rudderless in the community. That is what is happening. When I was trying to run for President I went throughout the country. It was pretty bad then but it must be a hell of a lot worse now. The inspector's report consolidates this. I met people, some of whom were in wonderful facilities largely created by voluntary work and fund-raising, and I saw people in the State sector who were heroic. They were reducing staff and not replacing them. People were working and exhausted but only because they were devoted to their patients.

The chairman of the Mental Health Commission said: "But it is clear from reports of the independent body monitoring the implementation of this policy that insufficient community services have been put in place." That is the official statement. How can anyone possibly deny it? Dr. Devitt, the inspector of the health services, said nursing staff numbers continue to dwindle. This is what I was witnessing in 2011. There were unfilled vacancies resulting in professionals being pulled out of community services to plug gaps in inpatient care. That is the work of the State. Worse still is what is going on to this day. I was one of the signatories of a Bill presented to the House relating to involuntary electro-convulsion therapy. Apparently, it is still being used. This is a shame and a disgrace.

In the final part of my contribution I will concentrate particularly on the situation at Ballinasloe. The reason I came to the House was because my heart was broken when I read some of the material that came in. I have an e-mail from a clinical psychologist who is very concerned about the decision to close the beds. From reading all the e-mails that have come in, it seems the points system by which these decisions are made is seriously flawed and has been interfered with to gear it in one particular direction. That is grossly wrong.

Earlier, I referred to putting people into a rundown facility in Roscommon. We are told that there will be a new 50-bed unit at University College Hospital Galway in March 2015. This is 2014 and there is no sign of anything; not a blade of grass has stirred in it. What the hell is going on? These are people without a voice. The voice they have is the voice in Seanad Éireann and thank God it has been preserved.

I do not intend to mention the name of this man or his daughter but her mental health failed her early in her life and she has had a desperate lifetime. Now, they want to close the only remaining acute unit. This man's daughter was a patient in the unit until last March when she moved into a house in the community. He is concerned that if she needs readmission there will be no place for her to go. The patient is forgotten and the plan reigns supreme.

The position is that these institutions are returning money. How is it that they are returning money from the budget every year? Why are they not spending it? This is a political decision as well as a financial one. They spent €3 million in the past year on the unit in Ballinasloe. That is a total waste. Why are they still pouring money down the drain? It is the single most modern piece of infrastructure in that area of the west. It seems to me quite extraordinary that it would be treated in this manner. The survey carried out was a major disaster. I wish to make a practical point born of human experience. What about the damage suffered by the place in Galway? We all know about it. The Minister of State shook her head but I believe the roof is not even still on the building. The man who contacted me said that he lives in Ballinasloe and that the trip to the overcrowded traffic-choked unit in Galway could take him two hours, while the trip to Dublin is one and a half hours. That is what the Government is doing to them. It is worse than going to Dublin.

The final example I want to highlight is a real heart-breaker. It is from a woman who has a sister to whom she is devoted and who suffered from epilepsy when she was young. That appears to have triggered some further mental distress. She was put into care in Ballinasloe and her situation appears to have deteriorated. She has lost her real emotional connection with her family. She insisted her parents were kidnappers and not her real parents. She said her real parents were coming to get her but that she would not be there because she would be at the Rose of Tralee festival. She said her boyfriend was coming to get her and that she was going to be in a movie. She said that she had all her bags packed and that she would wait. It was heart-breaking. That was her reaction to being five minutes from her home. What on earth would the devastation to that poor bewildered woman be like if she is moved so far away from where she is? We must also consider the impact on the patient's family. It is not only devastating for the patients themselves. Then there is the fact that there was no proper consultation process.

I will end with the most heart-breaking thing of all. A woman wrote to me and said that when she was a child she used to watch her parents looking after her sister while she had an epileptic attack. She said she would hear the screams that preceded a seizure and she would run through the house, the classroom, the schoolyard or wherever - it did not matter. She would cradle her sister's head and let her dig her nails into her arm. The woman had watched her mother and father do this and so she did it too. She said she figured the e-mail was simply another way of trying to cushion her sister's fall and keep her head from hitting the floor. It was a way of cradling her and letting her nails sink in because she loved her sister.

We should consider this in the light of the fact that money is put back into the Exchequer and in light of the contradictions in the motions. I know the Minister of State and how humane and decent she is. I do not know how difficult it is to be in government because I have never been in government and I never will be. However, I will continue to be a gadfly on the rump of Irish political life for as long as I can. I am sorry if it stings my friends - the Minister of State is definitely one of them - but I urge her to take this debate as support in her fight to look after the people who are most vulnerable.