Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was speaking about the general background to the particular situation we find ourselves in now. This amendment and the other amendments in my name and the name of Senator Boyhan are to try to put firm dates on the process of transfer.

I want to expand the point. The Minister of State recently visited Dundrum. She did not see the interior of the old building for various reasons. I went to visit it when I was Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. My purpose was to do effectively what the Minister of State was doing. It was to see the site and to see what could be done with it. At that time, the Minister for Health and Children and Tánaiste was Ms Mary Harney. She had gone to Dundrum and said it was worse inside than her worst nightmare. Things may have improved a little but the building was rather antiquated.

I want the House to know this for the record. When I arrived there, I was shown around the campus, in which there was a new section. As I was shown through the new section I saw a gym. Some of the psychiatric nurses were practising judo and all sorts of things in the gym. I went down a corridor. There was a series of modern cells. The thing that struck me about them was that there were rolled up mattresses on the beds and they were not occupied. Eventually, I got to the Victorian block. When I got to the Victorian block, I was greeted by the management of the Central Mental Hospital, given my tea and biscuits and asked to do a tour of the remainder of the premises, which I did. I agree with the Minister of State completely that the grounds are magnificent. In fact, the current director, Dr. Kennedy, says that the gardeners are artists. The grounds are magnificent. Yet, nothing prepared me for what was in the Victorian block. Even though it looks an impressive building from the outside, in fact it was configured by depressing cells with little windows 8 ft or 10 ft from the floor. There were no facilities whatsoever, not even a television. Having gone around the other prisons in the prison system, it struck me as extraordinary that inmates in Dundrum could not have access in their cells to television. As I was walking up and down the stairs I noticed that someone had helpfully and thoughtfully laid out a carpet of paint flakes that had been swept down from the ceilings of the premises to impress on me the decrepit state of the premises.

All of that is part of this process. The reason I went there that day and the reason the then Tánaiste, Mary Harney, went there was to see what we could do about all the critical reports from the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the Irish Penal Reform Trust.The problem, as the Minister of State said, is that responsibility for mental illness in the criminal justice system is not, and cannot, be confined simply to one Department. If, however, my Cabinet colleague and I shared the ministerial responsibility, we would have a shared responsibility to make sure that something was done about it. It was in that context that the proposal was made to sell Shanganagh Castle in south Dublin. Part of it was sold for €9 million to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and part of it for €21 million to a private developer. That €30 million was eventually used to purchase the Thornton Hall lands. The House will probably recall that there was controversy about that because of the price that was paid, but the process was such that we had no compulsory purchase order rights. It was very difficult to get anybody to give us any property in the county of Dublin on which a jail could be erected. The plan was to redevelop the Mountjoy site, the plans for which were put in place. At that time, the management of Mountjoy indicated that it was not even possible economically to put toilets into cells there. It was in that context that the decision was made to have a new campus at Thornton Hall. It was anticipated at that time, and Professor Kennedy has acknowledged this, that his facility would be located at one end of that site, with its own entrance into it, but that it would be much closer to Dublin's main prison.

The economic crash took place in 2008 and 2009 and Thornton Hall was stalled. A review group was set up by the former Minister, Alan Shatter, as to what should happen with Thornton Hall. It comprised a number of people, including Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness, retired Supreme Court judge. They reported that the project at Thornton Hall should go ahead but, needless to say, in 2011 they said it should go ahead on a less ambitious basis than had previously been planned. We had believed, however, and the then Government had believed, that there would be at least €200 million or €250 million out of the sale of Mountjoy Prison and the hospital in Dundrum to finance a state-of-the-art set of prison institutions of varying degrees, from high security to low security, with prison grounds and remedial facilities attached to them. We had also believed that prisoners' mental health would be accommodated in this respect. The Minister of State has fairly conceded, as has Professor Kennedy, that the 170 places will probably fill up very soon when this is all dealt with, but it is not good enough just to say that, and I do not say this critically of the Minister of State. It is not good enough for the State to say it has reached 170 because of the figures Senator Bacik mentioned in respect of our shocking underinvestment in mental illness among the prison population compared with any other state in the EU. We invest a third or a quarter of the average. This has gone on for 30 years, since the term, "criminal lunatic asylum", was abolished. We have done it consistently.

The point I wish to make is this: at present in Cloverhill Prison, a wing, D2, is being used effectively as a psychiatric ward for difficult prisoners. It is wholly unsuitable for that purpose, and prisoners who are detained in that wing are there under the management. I am not criticising any prison officer or staff at all. The prisoners are not there under decent clinical supervision. They are not being treated with a view to their overcoming their condition. They are being contained in that place.I presume the Minister of State will agree that if a person suffering from psychosis, schizophrenia, massive addiction problems or other personality problems such as manic depression and the like is kept in an area with similar people in prison circumstances, the chances of giving that person decent remedial treatment are small. Professor Kennedy stated that this regime is ridiculous because if the person is given even anti-depressant tablets, Diazepam or another medication, on return to the cell the person is bulled into giving the medication to other prisoners who wish to use it to accommodate their own addiction problems and the like. What I am really saying is that what the Minister of State is doing through the Bill is good, but it is certainly not good enough.

If there is any doubt about that, I ask the House to consider the commission of investigation conducted by Grainne McMorrow, senior counsel, into the death of Gary Douch. I have the report before me. He was a prisoner in Mountjoy Prison. He was apprehensive about his security in the particular place he was in Mountjoy Prison and asked to be transferred out of it for his own safety. Horrifically, he was put into a communal cell in B base block in Mountjoy Prison with 12 other people who were being accommodated overnight there. They included several prisoners who had been transferred from Cloverhill Prison. Among them was a prisoner named Stephen Egan. It is all in the report, so I do not think I am doing any injustice by naming him. He was suffering major psychiatric illness, as the report states. What is horrific is that he had been suffering from very serious psychiatric illness and earlier that year was sent to the Central Mental Hospital but then certified fit to go back into the prison system. He was found to be too difficult to manage by the institutions to which he was sent back and there was a reluctance to have him. Eventually, in a moment of extreme carelessness, he was admitted to Mountjoy Prison without any of his drugs or charts being put into that room. In the course of the evening, he killed Gary Douch. He was eventually found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to imprisonment for life, which is a very severe punishment for that offence.

I really do recommend that report to all present. It did not receive significant publicity at the time. It details just how inadequate was the response to the crisis in this man's incarceration, treatment and mental illness. It is a very severe report in some respects because it actually lays a charge of personal responsibility at the then governors of Cloverhill and Mountjoy prisons, whom I will not name. They were named in the report as people bearing a significant responsibility for what happened on that occasion. This all happened in 2006. At the time, I was very conscious that Dermot Kinlen, the then Inspector of Prisons, had condemned the use of this cell facility in Mountjoy but his words were not heeded by the management of the prison. It was in those circumstances that the commission of investigation to which I refer was established.

All of this leads me to believe that prisoners who are suffering from a psychiatric illness or a mental illness must be treated in a radically different way from that in which they are treated now.They must be given remedial accommodation and expert, full-time medical supervision. They cannot be ferried in and out of the prison system. The strange thing about the Stephen Egan case is that he had gone to the CMH suffering from acute disorders but had been certified by the CMH as being fit to go back to the prison system. The clinical director's certificate avers that a consultation took place and he was found to be "fit" to return to prison. What is really shocking is that shortly after he returned to Mountjoy, external solicitors for the prisoner engaged their own consultant psychiatrist. The report stated:

On 26th July 2006 however – three days before his transfer from Cloverhill to Mountjoy Prison – Mr Egan was seen by an external senior clinical psychologist at the request of Mr Egan’s solicitors. This senior consultant clinical psychologist had been asked to interview Mr Egan and to prepare a report in anticipation of a sentencing hearing on 27th July 2006. [Mr. Egan was due to be sentenced for another offence] He had no prior knowledge of Mr Egan’s history as a troublesome prisoner with a propensity for violence. Nor was he aware of Mr Egan’s history of mental health problems, or of his recent sojourn in the Central Mental Hospital. Mr Egan was brought down to a regular visiting area for this interview.

The consultant said that when he met this prisoner, he found him to be "manic", "completely deluded" and "very unwell". This was approximately five days before poor Mr. Douch was killed in that prison cell.

The Gráinne McMorrow report quoted above details the completely dysfunctional relationship between the prison system at the time, the particular institutions in that system and the CMH. I am not here to point fingers or to hand out blame in retrospect. Although the McMorrow report was commissioned when I was Minister, it was not published until many years later.

I wish to put two points on the record. First, I strongly believe that we must build Thornton Hall because Mountjoy is not adequate as a prison and never will be. We have the site, we have done the ground work and we must build it. The review group which included Ms Justice McGuinness also came to the conclusion that the site should be used for a prison. That is not my point to justify all of that. Second, the Department of Health is exercising supervision over a small institution at Dundrum which has between 98 and 102 places and I am sure it is doing that very conscientiously. The Department of Justice is presiding over a prison system as best it can, where access to acute psychiatric treatment for ill prisoners is virtually non-existent. The Department of Justice cannot just put prisoners in a van, send them up to Dundrum, say that they have gone completely off the rails, need urgent inpatient treatment now and cannot be accommodated in the prison system. I hope the Minister of State does not mind me saying that today's Bill shows what happens when we govern in silos. We get a relocation of the CMH from Dundrum to Portrane and a significant but not adequate improvement in the resources that the CMH will have in future. However, looking systemically at how people in the Irish criminal justice system are dealt with, we find that there is practically nothing of significance being done by this legislation to deal with that situation. That said, I take the Minister of State's assurances that the Government is intent on doing this.

The Land Development Agency to which the Minister of State referred in her remarks is now going to deal with the OPW land and develop it.I mentioned earlier that Shanganagh Castle was disposed of to finance the Thornton Hall site. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council sat on that land, or part of it, until very recently. I notice that in November the elected members of the council were asked to make a section 183 decision to vest the land in the Land Development Agency and a presentation was made to them for that purpose.

It is extraordinary that in the middle of a housing crisis it took 15 or 16 years for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to do anything with that land. The same could be said about Thornton Hall. It is sitting there and it is ready to be developed as a prison. Mountjoy needs to be developed. The Leas-Chathaoirleach might be interested to know the Mountjoy campus was extended by the acquisition of land to the side so it could be commercially redeveloped. Consultant architects were brought in with very elaborate plans for a major urban residential quarter to be built on the site. I fully accept the economic collapse of 2007 to 2009, inclusive, made this impossible but such projects are becoming possible again. The Dundrum, Shanganagh and Mountjoy sites are now available if the Government wants to be proactive in ensuring facilities are built.

I urge the House not to think we have solved all the problems with today's Bill and the relocation, good as it is, to the beautiful peninsula at Portmarnock. We have not. There is a massive problem out there that is not addressed, and it is how we deal with people who end up in prison. Professor Harry Kennedy, in one of his reports, indicated that people with mental illness end up in jail because they smash the window of a shop or pub in a psychotic moment. District judges find themselves in a position where they can hardly do anything with such people but send them to jail because if they let them out on the street they do not know what calamity might occur as soon as they leave the courthouse. It is jail or nothing. The hope is that something could be done for such people when they are put in prison. If a person smashes a window, wrecks a pub or throws a brick at somebody, he or she probably does not go to the Central Mental Hospital at all. It is not the normal route and only a small number of people end up there for such tiny matters.

I ask the Minister of State to ensure the committee she mentions, a cross-departmental committee on mental illness, would address the criminal justice system as a matter of absolute priority. There are many other concerns, such as residential accommodation in the community and different approaches to the treatment of people suffering mental disability and the like, but there is no chance of prison having any remedial effect if it is populated by untreated people suffering mental illness. People do not speak about being fair to prisoners that often but it is very unfair on a prisoner to have to share accommodation and food with people suffering serious untreated mental illness and liable to become violent or whatever. It is depressing for people suffering from no mental disorder to have to share the same facilities, corridors or open spaces within prisons with people who are clearly unsuited to being confined in those institutions.

It is a systemic matter. What we have not done has been roundly condemned by the committee for the prevention of torture internationally. The committee stated said the Portrane proposal is an improvement. It does not comprise unreasonable people.We know from the figures that Senator Bacik has mentioned that we are only doing a tiny fraction of what we should be doing and this will have consequences, as in the case of Gary Douch and Stephen Egan. These situations have consequences that may not be as horrific as in that particular case but they impinge on the well-being of everybody whom we send to prison. It is time for the Government to grasp the nettle, get on with doing what the group, including Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness, recommended, and that is building decent prison facilities and getting out of Mountjoy Prison.

I want to make another point in case what I have said appears to be critical of Mountjoy Prison. The then governor was personally attached with responsibility for what happened but since then there have been good governors there who deserve our absolute praise for what they have done. Senator Bacik referred to the fact that the prison is immensely better than what it used to be. Governors Whelan, Mullen and Murphy have done immense work to transform Mountjoy Prison in difficult circumstances. If the Central Mental Hospital Dundrum, built in 1854, is unsuitable for mentally ill patients, Mountjoy Prison is ten times more unsuitable for the imprisonment of people if we have any intention of bringing them back into society improved, with a different attitude or with different prospects. Drugs are rife in these places and we must deal with the prison system in its entirety.

I wanted to get all of that off my chest because it has to be said. I congratulate the Minister of State for being the person who brings this Bill, which is an improvement, forward. I hope I am not being negative or throwing cold water on that if I say that if this is the collective response of Ireland and if we pat ourselves on the back and say that this is the day we really did something to improve psychiatric services, etc., in the criminal justice system in Ireland, we are seriously deluding ourselves. We are only dealing with 5% to 10% of the problem that exists.