Dáil debates

Thursday, 10 December 2020

Central Mental Hospital (Relocation) Bill 2020: Second Stage

 

4:35 pm

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for missing my slot earlier. I have not yet mastered the skill of bilocation. The traffic is very heavy so I ran the last part of the journey. I will be as fit as Ronnie Delany for the Olympics.

I wish the Minister of State, Deputy Mary Butler, well in her portfolio. I know she will make genuine efforts to help with mental health in a caring way and will budget accordingly. I welcome the Central Mental Hospital's move from the site we have known to the new Portrane site. I know the Land Development Agency is also involved. Any moves we can make to offer some empowerment, respect and a listening ear to people who have psychotic tendencies or mental health issues are very welcome. I listened to Deputy McNamara's comments on the journey here. I often listen to him on these issues because since the first months of the pandemic, he has consistently called for data to be collated. I have done so too but he is far more eloquent and in tune with the issues than am I. Some mental health workers have not been deemed "essential" and their work was halted for that reason. Some others, including specialists who do a wonderful job in their own right, were taken away from services and facilities that are very important to young and old. Removing staff from these services could actually create mental health issues. Specialist therapists are especially important for adolescents. Last night I spoke to a colleague who was aware of a 14-year-old child at a boarding school who is in a very distressed state. That case could traumatise everyone around him.

Trying to get any information from the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, is like trying to get the third secret of Fatima. Trying to get information about mental health should not be that difficult. The conglomerate of the HSE and the Department of Health tells people to go around the house and mind the dresser. These bodies keep the circle going by keeping the paper replies going and most of them are meaningless. They seem to invent new adjectives and words. They must have scriptwriters experienced in thinking of long words that say nothing. As referenced by Deputy McNamara, the 2007 to 2011 Government ring-fenced funding with great aplomb. There was a blaze of glory but drilling down into it revealed that the money went to other parts of the HSE.

I am not saying we in Tipperary know better than anybody else about this, but one of our hospital institutions, St. Michael's, lost its long-stay beds on the same grounds as St. Joseph's, now South Tipperary General Hospital, another nice name dreamt up by the HSE. Whatever was wrong about being under the watchful eye of St. Joseph I do not know. He looked after many of us who appreciate him or pray to him and he still does. We have to get rid of all this. We lost our hospital. We were promised the sun, the moon and the stars by the former Minister of State, John Moloney, at the time and I railed against it. Then the former Minister of State, Kathleen Lynch, put the tin hat on it and we lost our hospital. We were promised the Rolls Royce of service in the community.

I salute the people involved in the community teams but they do not have enough members, time or facilities. We are trying to get upgraded works carried out to our crisis house. They have been going on for ever. They will now start, I hope, in the first quarter of next year. However, we need long-stay service beds in Tipperary because the people of south Tipperary, which is a big area, have to travel to Kilkenny. People in the north of the county have to travel to Ennis. Those two places are overfull already. I am not saying they do not want Tipperary people but they just cannot cope with them. In Kilkenny they have the south-east region of Carlow-Kilkenny and Wexford to look after as well as Waterford. We in Tiobraid Árann are, pardon the expression, on the hind tit and we do not ever want to be on the hind tit. We are entitled to our rightful place in the queue for services, especially for people with mental health issues.

The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, has visited us, met us twice and listened to us. She has also visited the facility in Kilkenny, which was brought through an atrocious court case. Atrocious things happened there because the facility is understaffed, poorly managed and lacks resources. That has changed. The Minister of State said something to us that I dispute furiously, as do all of us; she found it was under-capacity. It is not under-capacity. All my stories are from mental health service users and their families and the consultants and doctors. They say it is almost impossible to get in there and that when people get in they are not halfway through their treatment before they are out.

There have been some awful incidences in Waterford as well. I read and heard about the court cases. The Minister of State delivered beds recently for Waterford, and rightly so. I would not deny any county more beds. All counties are entitled to fair play, but vulnerable people are especially entitled. We need our long-stay beds back. The former Minister of State, Jim Daly, said in the House several times to me and others that we had a deficit of 15 beds in south Tipperary and we would get them. HSE officials held meetings. Now, however, the current Minister of State is saying something different to us, trying to convince us there are enough beds and saying we will not get any beds in Tipperary. That will not be accepted. People in Tipperary are entitled to these beds because we have no public transport. From Emly down to Kilkenny is an awful distance. From Monard to the famed Limerick Junction there are huge areas and distances. Then there is the other way, from north Tipperary up into Ennis. When a loved one, friend or whoever else goes into one of these institutions, they need help, they are down and they are low, but they will recover with the support of the medical and specialist services. They also want buddies, by which I mean families, friends, partners or whoever else, to support and visit them, but those buddies cannot visit them in Kilkenny. They have to get a taxi out from the bus station adjacent to the hospital, St. Luke's, which is just not possible.

Then there is the enormous amount of money it costs the Garda, with Garda cars carrying people, whether they go voluntarily or involuntarily, to be transferred to Kilkenny. It is unbelievable. There is an enormous waste of time and money in the consultants travelling to and fro, from Tipperary to Kilkenny and from Tipperary to Ennis. There is huge waste in the system. I appeal to the Minister of State this evening as we are bringing this out and shining a light on the mental health services here and the facilities in Portrane. We need to deal with the waste. Part of the Rolls Royce model was a taxi service. Two or three taxis were hired. Then there was a row with the Psychiatric Nurses Association, PNA, nurses because if it was an involuntary case, I think they wanted three nurses. The next thing, one Friday evening, at about 6 o'clock, a wonderful driver rang me. He had got an email at 5.20 p.m. telling him his services were no longer required. People either walk, run or swim to Kilkenny or they get a Garda car but they cannot get other transport.

There are huge deficiencies, and it is unfair to these people. After all, they are our siblings, friends, family and community members and they need those services and have to get them. I appeal to the Minister of State, along with what she is doing in Portrane, along with her compassionate attitude, to ensure that long-stay beds are put back in Clonmel. We are not looking for them forever, but when people need a couple of weeks or a month, perhaps, they need them to be there. The crisis house is fine but it is small and needs to be extended, and the community teams' work will be easier because they will have continuity and a place to treat patients if they have to be treated.

This is very serious, as I said, and there are the pressures that Covid has now added on top of even students, including sixth-year students. I have a daughter who was in sixth year last year. She is a wonderful girl, thank God, but the uncertainty was so difficult for students. Students who are now in college are sent to work from home. Families try to save up the money, and they did so for the first semester, but now they are getting calls and demands for rent for a second semester when the students are not living there. They are living at home and have to use all the facilities there. They are not able to use the facilities in college. There are all those pressures.

There are the pressures on businesspeople. Businesses have been shut by Government diktats and draconian measures, as I call them. We are the best country in Europe at managing Covid, we are told regularly by the Minister. That is because we have the most severe restrictions. I ask the House to consider what has been done to the publicans, hairdressers and dancing teachers. Thank God we are fighting to get them back and they are slowly getting back, but it is nothing short of a tyranny, and these sweeping powers will go on until next July. We wanted a review in February but we did not get one. The moratoriums on the banks were lifted. We let them ride into the Wild West, all guns blazing, terrorising people. That is what they are doing. We have institutions supported by the State that are terrorising people. We almost own one of the banks. They are doing this to people when they should not be doing it.

I appeal to the Minister of State's better judgment and kind disposition and ask her to try to empathise with these people. I am not an expert on this, but my late mother was in St. Michael's and availed of its services, as did many other people. It was a wonderful institution. I will never forgive the former Minister of State, Ms Lynch. She said it was set in stone, written in blood, that it was to close. Now €1.9 million has been spent on upgrading it for Covid. We are told it will not be suitable when Covid is gone - and we hope it will be gone - for any mental health patients. That kind of lack of joined-up thinking and disgraceful and wasteful spending should not be allowed to go on.

I wish the Minister of State well with this project. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me in because I could have missed my slot. I look forward to the Minister of State's response.

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