Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 5, between lines 17 and 18, to insert the following:

"(c) The references in this subsection to a court shall not include the District Court.".

I have already spoken a little about this amendment and the intention behind it, which is to remove the jurisdiction to deal with section 4(6) applications from the District Court in its entirety to facilitate the court diversions scheme currently in operation from Clover Hill. I take the Minister of State's point that a District Court judge could adjourn a case and I understand the preference of those working in the diversion programme would be not to have the District Court involved, which is the purpose of my amendment. Their second best preference would be to give the District Court the power to adjourn and obtain a court report from the Central Mental Hospital. I understand this was introduced in the Henchy report in a model criminal law (insanity) Bill. This would be a way of finding whether the Central Mental Hospital was the appropriate designated centre.

A further suggestion to deal with this difficulty of the District Court making these orders in too many cases would be that evidence must be heard from a consultant psychiatrist and the staff of the hospital or local approved centre that would admit the person, and that is now facilitated through the acceptance of amendment No. 1. I already referred to the case of DH (a Minor) v. Ireland and others in which Mr. Justice Kelly established that no judge can force a doctor to admit somebody thereby preventing the admission of another person who is more ill and no judge can order a doctor to treat someone contrary to his or her conscience.

Having considered the issue, if the Minister of State still feels that the District Court should retain this jurisdiction there might be other amendments that should be made to ensure rigorous enough scrutiny of the use of the section 4(6) jurisdiction by the District Court. I know the amendment is supported by all of the psychiatrists working in the prison psychiatric in-reach and the court liaison service and by the Irish College of Psychiatrists. I am also told that any amendments which encourage the admission of persons charged with minor offences to the Central Mental Hospital may have very severe consequences for those persons. Sending a person with schizophrenia charged with a minor offence to the Central Mental Hospital is a disproportionate response. I am told there would be a catastrophic outcome to sending people with an intellectual disability to the Central Mental Hospital where they are unlikely to recover. Several such admissions have been made to the Central Mental Hospital and it is a real concern. The Minister of State is well aware that the Central Mental Hospital has a capacity of 93 and its beds are full at any one time, generally with persons for whom a special verdict has been reached in cases involving very serious offences.

Will the Minister of State consider removing the jurisdiction from the District Court under this section in its entirety? If he is not minded to do so, will he take on board some of the other suggestions made to him by professionals working in the area, and which I have just put on the record, to ensure we will not overuse the power before the District Court and that it will not be used in a disproportionate or catastrophic way in respect of persons who should not be detained in the Central Mental Hospital or local psychiatric centres under the criminal law? We all need to ensure that whatever amendments and changes are made in this legislation, they facilitate the rolling-out of the national diversion programme, which is clearly in keeping with the model in A Vision for Change and with proved best practice internationally.