Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, to the House. I commend my colleagues, Senator O'Keeffe and Moran, for proposing and seconding this motion on behalf of the Labour Party Senators. I am delighted the motion has cross-party support because such a topic deserves our support. It acknowledges the Government's commitment to work on mental health services and to improve the provision of such services. I commend the Minister of State for her very clear commitment to these issues and for her achievements in securing funding for mental health services. The statistics speak for themselves. Other speakers have referred to the commitments already made, such as the following: in 2012, a special measures package worth €35 million, including the approval of 414 posts; in 2013, a further €35 million and 477 posts, for which recruitment is continuing; and in 2014, a further €20 million will be ring-fenced, with approximately 250 to 280 additional staff to be provided.

The motion also refers to other developments and achievements. I refer in particular to the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Bill which has recently been published and is long-awaited. As a member of the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality, I participated in the hearings with a range of different groups and individuals. We also worked with the Law Reform Commission which has carried out important research in this area. The Bill will replace the very dated current system based on 1811 and 1871 legislation which refer to lunacy and the wards of court system which denies all sorts of decision-making capacity to the person to whom it applies. The new Bill has been the subject of immense consultation and negotiation and I predict the debates will be good. This Bill is a very important achievement of this Government in the area of mental health.

Previous speakers have referred to other developments such as the recent important announcement by the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Rabbitte, about cyberbullying. The Law Reform Commission in its programme for law reform is committed to examining cyberbullying in the context of other forms of cyber crime. It is well known that cyberbullying has had a very damaging effect on the mental health of young people in particular, as evidenced by very tragic cases. Senator Gilroy spoke about suicide prevention strategies which must also focus on bullying and cyberbullying. Senator Moran noted that the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, has initiated some very important anti-bullying strategies in schools which focus in particular on homophobic bullying which is a real issue for many children.

I spoke this morning at an event organised by the National Women's Council on violence against women. The Law Reform Commission came in for some criticism by Women's Aid on a related topic. Although the Law Reform Commission intends to examine cyberbullying, it did not see the need for a reform of the law on stalking. This is unfortunate because stalking is at the extreme end of bullying and there have been some serious instances of this behaviour. The current legislation is the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 provides for an offence of harassment but it is a very difficult offence to prosecute because a very high level of proof is required, nor does it cover the cyberbullying element of stalking which is carried out on social media. I suggest this could be reviewed or revisited.

Other speakers have also referred to aspects of the motion dealing with the implementation of the strategy A Vision For Change and issues such as services for children and adolescents and the Government's Alzheimer's disease and dementia strategy, the suicide prevention strategies and the Sea Change campaign, for example.

I wish to return to a matter raised by Senator O'Keeffe which underlies all of these different measures and initiatives, namely, the move from institutional care to care in the community for persons with mental health issues. This has been the subject of an important recent publication by a colleague of mine who works in the Trinity school of nursing, Dr. Damien Brennan. The Minister of State may be familiar with his book, Irish Insanity:1800 - 2000. Dr. Brennan has carried out a comprehensive study which demonstrates the scandal of incarceration over two centuries of persons with mental illness. I was privileged to attend the launch of the book at which he spoke about the scandal which is much greater in scale than the scandal of the industrial schools and the Magdalen institutions but a scandal of that nature, none the less. For very many decades, and particularly in the 20th century after independence, this State incarcerated persons with mental illness in very damaging and what we would now regard as very abusive conditions, for long periods of time and in much greater numbers than were incarcerated in our prisons. The prison statistics for the 1950s and 1960s show that Ireland had very low levels of imprisonment but there were extremely high levels of persons incarcerated in psychiatric institutions - State-run institutions - during those periods. It is very interesting to note the management and the control of those institutions which were State-run rather than institutions managed by religious orders or other groups. There is a great deal of research work to be done to uncover the figures and the human stories behind those experiences.

The Minister of State this morning launched a report on women and the criminal justice system and the incarceration of women produced by the Irish Penal Reform Trust. This report reiterates the theme of the need to move from incarceration to community care. We have made that move, happily, for persons with mental illness and psychiatric health issues.

This is an important theme running through A Vision for Change and all of the initiatives that have been taken, but we still incarcerate too many people with mental health problems in our prisons. The position paper that the Minister of State launched today highlighted this.

Given the large number of female offenders, our two women's prisons - one in Limerick and the Dóchas Centre in Dublin - are chronically overcrowded. We are incarcerating women with mental health problems. A 2005 study found that 60% of sentenced women prisoners that year had lifetime histories of mental illness. Other research on the imprisonment of Irish women shows high levels of self-harm, substance abuse and addiction difficulties, yet we continue to incarcerate them. Some diversion initiatives are useful, but it is time that we consider a more comprehensive programme of decarceration of women prisoners, particularly those with mental health issues. I am taken with the first recommendation of the report of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, IPRT, which the Minister of State will have seen today. It pointed out that, where women offenders had mental health problems, the earlier the point of mental health intervention, the better. Consideration should be given to amending the existing legislative framework to provide for the diversion of those with mental illness who have committed minor offences to community inpatient or outpatient facilities by specialist mental health courts.

Professor Harry Kennedy of the Central Mental Hospital has set up an innovative and effective diversion programme for prisoners with mental health difficulties. Clearly, there is a high need for this among the female prisoner population. The proposal has considerable merit.

If we are discussing a move from incarceration to community care for people with psychiatric illnesses, we should also do the same for prisoners with such illnesses, particularly those committed - as the majority of women prisoners are - for non-violent minor offences.