asked the Minister for Health if he will indicate the present position regarding the provision of suitable institutional accommodation for mentally-handicapped children.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Mentally-Handicapped Children.
23.
The number of beds available at present in the special institutions catering for mentally handicapped persons is about 2,750. Of this number, approximately 1,750 are assigned at present to children, i.e. persons under 16 years of age.
Two schemes which are now in progress will provide 263 beds for mentally handicapped children and two schemes are in planning which envisage the provision of about 110 children's beds.
In his consideration of these figures, the Deputy should bear in mind that, at the end of World War II, the number of beds in special institutions for the care of the mentally handicapped was only 1,000 approximately.
Is the Minister aware that the patients in general mental hospitals range from a very low age? In fact, in Cork Mental Hospital, there is an age group as low as 6½ years. Surely the Minister will agree that it is most undesirable to have patients of such tender years committed to ordinary mental institutions, where they have to mix with adult patients? Will the Minister not agree that the question of the treatment of this type of patient should get priority in his Department and that efforts to provide suitable institutional accommodation for mentally handicapped children should be expedited?
All I can say in reply to that question is that there is nothing more can be done than we are doing at present to expedite provision of accommodation for these children.
Does the Minister agree with the present trend that seems to operate in the country of committing young children to general mental hospitals where they have to mix with adult mental patients, some of them suffering from extreme mental illnesses?
It is extremely undesirable for a number of reasons that children of any age who are mentally handicapped should be committed to these mental hospitals but it is the choice of the lesser of two evils. Are we to leave that child in a home where the parents cannot care for it? That is the choice that has to be made. As I say, we are only too painfully aware of the shortage of accommodation for mentally handicapped children but everything possible is being done since the War to speed up the provision of accommodation. We cannot do everything at once. It is not the only thing that the Minister for Health has had on his plate for the past 15 years.
And if there were any room, the Minister would surely get another bit on the surface.
Certainly, if the need to do something exists, I shall do the best I can.