asked the Minister for Health if he will investigate the conditions in some mental hospitals where very young patients are hospitalised with older people, with a view to having separate quarters provided for those patients in the upper age group.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Hospitalisation of Mental Patients.
91.
If the Deputy will give me the particulars of the hospitals he has in mind, I will have the matter investigated.
In some hospitals separate accommodation is provided for young people. In others the small numbers involved make it difficult to provide separate accommodation. In addition, some young patients can very suitably be cared for in adult wards.
What is the position at St. Brendan's Hospital in Dublin?
That is a separate question.
The Deputy is asking about a particular hospital, while the question relates to hospitals generally. I have not the information sought.
Might I ask a supplementary question? I think I mentioned on a previous occasion—perhaps it was to the Minister for Social Welfare—the peculiar problem that arises. As we are catching up on the necessity for providing accommodation for mentally retarded children, the institutions available at present are extremely reluctant to accept children other than children in the four to six years category when they can be more readily adapted to institutional training. There is a residue of children in the eight to 12 years group whom we have failed to accommodate and whom institutions are reluctant to receive, and who, if they become unmanageable, are in danger of finding themselves in mental hospitals. The result is that there is accumulating a non-recurring number of children of between eight and 12 which special institutions for retarded children are profoundly reluctant to accept. Would the Minister consider that anything could be done to persuade these institutions, in the light of the fact that it will be a non-recurring problem as we catch up on the demand for such accommodation, to take these children and so save them from being moved into mental hospitals when their families are no longer able to provide adequately for them.
As the Deputy knows, most of the children in that age group are emotionally disturbed, not just retarded, and I suppose that is the root of the reluctance.
I do not press the Minister on the matter now. I simply direct his attention to the problem, which I know to be one of considerable complexity.
I know the Deputy joins with me in regretting that it should be necessary to mix up young children at any stage with adults.