A Cheann Comhairle, I would like to especially thank you for allowing me to raise this matter this evening. While I would like to thank the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Treacy, for coming in to reply to me and high as I hold the Minister of State in esteem, I have to express my deep disappointment that the Minister for Health is not here to deal with a very important health issue.
This matter is a very difficult one to have to raise, involving as it does an entire family and especially the distressing experience of one wife committed involuntarily to a medical home on the initiation of her husband and on the order of two doctors. I have her agreement to raise this matter here tonight.
This happened exactly one week ago. At 5 p.m. on 14 May an ambulance, a squad car, two doctors and this woman's husband arrived at her home with a temporary committal order. No medical examination was done and no explanation was given to either the woman or her 74 year old mother who was there and who tried to oppose her being taken away. Despite strong appeals from women neighbours, at 6.30 p.m. she was forced into the ambulance with a bangharda and taken to St. Patrick's Hospital. There her clothes and possessions were taken away and she was locked in a room and allowed no telephone calls or visitors. She spent two nights locked up and was seen by a doctor on 16 May. He said he found the committal order inappropriate and told her she could leave.
The woman was released to her brother and is now in hiding afraid that she will be the subject of another committal order, because this woman knows that her mother-in-law was committed involuntarily to a mental hospital five years ago.
This was a strained and difficult marriage. On 7 May one week before her committal, the woman got a protection order in the District Court for a barring order hearing on 7 June next. A copy of this barring order was in file in Rathcoole Garda Station and it was from here that a squad car and two gardaí came to escort her to St. Patrick's. It apparently was ignored. The implications of that protection order were not considered at all, even by the main architects of her illegal detention.
The committal order was signed, according to the gardaí in Rathcoole, by a Dr. Browne who was a locum for the woman's own GP but who did not examine her, and by a Dr. Ollinger whom the woman had neither seen nor heard of. While she was in St. Patrick's she was examined by Dr. Matt Murphy who decided she should not be in there and refused to sign the temporary reception order. This woman, who applied for free legal aid but was told she would have to wait for four months and eventually made the barring order application herself, had the considerable resources of the Garda, the ambulance service and two doctors used against her.
This drama happened in broad daylight in a Dublin suburb, carefully planned and timed. This woman was treated like a criminal or a terrorist who could not be left free. Her neighbours and friends are outraged, all right thinking people are outraged, and those gardaí and doctors who became implicated in this plot are, I hope, examining their actions. In Dublin it is fairly certain people will come to the assistance of a woman like this, but what would happen in a remote village or townland? A person could be whisked away in a matter of hours and no one would raise a voice.
What are the legal facts? This committal was carried out under the provisions of section 184 of the Mental Treatment Act, 1945, but from my observations the requirements were not observed. The Act provides that two medical officers have to certify that each has examined the person to whom the application relates on a date not earlier than seven days before the date of the application and is of the opinion that the person is suffering from mental illness and requires for his recovery not more than six months suitable treatment and is unfit on account of his mental state for treatment as a voluntary patient. We have Victorian mental health legislation to deal with problems in an era of high technology medicine. Why are we operating with a 46 year old law when so much positive change in medical practice has come about and there has been a revolution in public understanding and awareness of mental health?
In my research I discovered a more up to date Act, the Health (Mental Services) Act, 1981, of 26 sections, which is in no way a comprehensive answer to what I want but makes some reforms. It is a dead Act. It never came into force because no ministerial order was made to put its provisions in force. Why not?
I wish the Minister for Health was here to answer the questions. Can the Minister of State tell me how these doctors and gardaí could collude to commit this woman? Why was this woman committed at all? Why was the protection order which was in the Garda station not taken note of?
The Minister bears responsibility for the present state of law which can allow similar abuses any time. I am seeking a review and a report on each of involuntary committal in all mental hospitals in this country in the past 20 years. I am seeking a repeal of the 1945 Act, and a new code of law for the treatment of mental health. There are many wives in poor marriages caught in an impossible state from a legal point of view. They have cause to fear tonight while this 1945 Act remains on the Statute Book.
I suggest that the constitutional protection of the woman in the home is a sick joke when an outrage like this can be done by the State against her.
