The Inspector of Mental Health Services has called for the Central Mental Hospital to be relocated to a new building as quickly as possible following a report which highlighted "extremely poor" and "unacceptable" conditions at the facility.
The inspector's annual report for 2004 also found unacceptable conditions at a number of older psychiatric institutions such as St Brigid's in Ballinasloe and St Joseph's Intellectual Disability Service in Dublin.
Inspectors who visited the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum were critical of hygiene and said a lack of toilets meant many patients had to slop out. The report also said there was a concentration on security rather than therapeutic issues.
Director of the hospital Dr Harry Kennedy yesterday said steps had been taken to improve conditions since the inspection last November, while slopping out would soon cease. He also told RTÉ's News at One that it was a "constant ethical struggle" to work in the environment and care for patients.
The Government has decided to relocate the hospital to a site alongside a newly built Mountjoy Prison. While the report calls for the hospital to be relocated, it said the decision to locate it alongside a prison should be revisited. The report was also critical of the services at St Joseph's in Portrane, Co Dublin, the only statutory service providing in-patient care for people with a mental illness and intellectual disability.
The inspectorate said it was concerned that there were no clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists or social workers within the services.
It also expressed concern at a number of cases where people presumed to have committed serious offences against people were not charged but were committed to their local psychiatric hospital.
Under the Mental Treatment Act these people could spend the remainder of their life in a mental hospital. If they were ever found guilty of an offence, a prison sentence would be for a considerably shorter period of time. The inspectorate has been informed of about 10 people in this category.
