Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

With reference to amendment No. 16 in my name, the Minister has gone some way towards addressing the concerns we raised on Committee Stage, but he has not gone far enough. I do not believe prison is at all an appropriate place in which to commit someone from the courts. I am not alone in this view. Among the UN principles for the protection of persons with mental illness and the improvement of mental health care, principle 1.1 states that all persons have a right to the best available mental health care, which shall be part of the health and social care system. The first UN congress on the prevention of crime and treatment of prisoners listed standard minimum rules for prisons which included the rule that prisoners found insane shall not be detained in prisons and shall be removed to mental institutions as soon as possible. It its submission, the National Disability Authority said it was not appropriate to designate any part of a prison for the assessment or treatment of persons with mental health or intellectual disability. The Mental Health Commission also said it was not appropriate, and that it appeared to be in contravention of the principle I outlined. The commission proposed that designated centres in addition to meeting the criteria specified for approved centres must also meet additional criteria, which arise later in the Bill.

Amendment No. 40 in my name addresses the fact that the powers of the prison governor are being extended if the eventuality of patients committed to the prisons is being covered. Under the Minister's amendment, a prison governor will have the additional role of a clinical director, without any additional training. That is odd, and at variance with normal practice. In its long submission, the Human Rights Commission outlined major concerns with this aspect. It said the use of prisons or sections of prisons is clearly prohibited by the UN principles. The commission says that any provision to allow the detention of mentally ill persons in prisons where adequate therapeutic services are not available, as is generally the case in Irish prisons, is wrong.

One could also consider aspects of the health services in prisons and the failure of our prison system to address the major problems we have in terms of people with mental or intellectual disabilities who are in prison, the major costs involved, and the fact that such people often emerge in worse shape than when they entered prison. Their disabilities are often exacerbated rather than addressed while in prison.

The Human Rights Commission also noted that the detention of mentally ill persons in prisons where staff are not equipped or trained to treat them appropriately is likely to have a detrimental effect on staff as well as on the detainees. The commission recommended that the term "designated centre" should not encompass any of the institutions not characterised as approved centres under the Mental Health Act 2001. It also recommended that reference to prisons should be removed and that a resource be made available to ensure adequate levels of accommodation in specialised, secure units in hospitals or clinics are put in place as a priority to accommodate any person committed to detention. That is the issue that needs to be addressed. If there is a need for specialised secure units, the State has a duty to begin putting those units in place so that they are not in prisons and are not required to be built in prisons. I hope they will never be used but given the nature of society and the illnesses from which people suffer, they probably will be used. If nobody is committed to them, that is all the better as it would show that some of our outpatient facilities are properly resourced to do that job.

In the Johnson case, the European Court of Justice held that the lack of suitable alternative facilities could not be used to justify inappropriate detention. In the event of a person being committed to prison despite his or her mental disorder and despite the court finding that he or she was of unsound mind, the likelihood is that he or she could go to the European Court and win a case against the Government because he or she was being held in an unsuitable facility. That issue needs to be taken on board.

If the Minister were to say this was a temporary measure of five years until such time as the specialist psychiatric facilities were built and that it would lapse after five years, I might consider it. Other than that it is not appropriate. If a court finds that a person has a psychiatric illness and is likely to be a danger to himself or herself or others, or is insane, not liable to the courts for his or her deeds and should be committed to a designated centre, then a suitable centre should be built. If the Minister were to agree that this was a temporary clause, I might consider withdrawing my amendment. Otherwise I will press my amendments Nos. 16, 28 and 40.

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