Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Okay. They still have two wards of court. Five residents are in that acute unit. The word "acute" signifies something.

It is not chronic; it is acute. It has had five residents for more than six months. Interestingly, they did not tell us whether that is years or months. I believe that one or two patients, or people, have been residents in that unit for years. That ties in with the housing crisis and there being no place to discharge people. Can the Ceann Comhairle imagine that we have somebody in an acute mental health unit because there is no place for them to go? I appreciate that the Minister of State inherited this, but it is my duty to outline what is happening.

On ECT, I welcome that the committee discuss and putt a spotlight on this issue. In my time, there has always been a presumption that ECT is good without long-term evidence to prove that. Both sides of the story were given and from what the experts said, some were in favour and some were not. I welcome that a spotlight has been placed on that. I have certainly seen that ECT has been used while other therapies have not been used. I wish we would get to a point where we were not using ECT, although I acknowledge that some of the experts who came before the committee said it was effective in dealing with certain disorders, particularly persistent depression. However, when I hear things like that, I think of all the people who were committed to psychiatric hospitals over the last 100 years. Now we know what was really going on with regard to sexual abuse and rape in institutions. When people were upset they were sent to another institution. Nobody seemed to ask them what was causing their upset. Nobody seemed to say, "Where have you come from or what has happened to you?", or to create the circumstances where that person could talk. When you look at the report on mother and baby homes and the recent report on all the schools in Dublin, one particular case jumped out at me. It related to a man who had been abused and was detained in the mental hospital in Dublin. I use the word "mental" because that is what was said. He escaped from the hospital and it did not seem to occur to any psychiatrist to maybe ask a few questions about how somebody could be so depressed and upset or about the number of suicides we have had.

I welcome that a debate has started in the committee challenging the biomedical model and putting forward alternatives to it. There is, however, a big difference with what is happening on the ground. I have heard other TDs talk about people being admitted through accident and emergency units into psychiatric units, leaving and then suicide. We have a suicide watch in Galway, which makes me very uncomfortable. Tremendous work is being done but there is a suicide watch group walking the canals and rivers. Some people think we should maybe put up barriers but there are no barriers that would stop people going into water.

We need to begin to have an honest and decent conversation about the level of depression and suicide in Irish society and the failure to provide appropriate services well before people get to the stage of utter desperation. While I welcome the commitment of people who are doing that, it is our job to put the spotlight on what the figures are. What are the figures for no services? That is one of the things that jumped out of all of this - the figures for no services on the ground. We have some data on the services being provided but no data on the unmet need.

I will finish on the work being done with the organisation on the ground and the London School of Economics. I understand the LSE will publish a paper soon on the amount of money that would be saved if we had a proper service and the consequences for our economy of not having a proper service or a whole range of services in the community. Forty years ago, in 1984, that was the vision. Planning for the Future was the vision. We will always need some institutions in the truest sense of the word "asylum", where people need a rest and a break in the truest sense, although the word "asylum" has taken on a very derogatory meaning. We need some residential centres and we also need huge investment in primary care facilities on every level with regard to prevention. I welcome this as a first step.

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