Commission urges HSE to improve management of Cork mental health facilities

The Health Service Executive (HSE) needs to improve governance, management, and investment in inpatient mental health centres in the Cork region, the head of the Mental Health Commission (MHC) has urged.

Its chief executive John Farrelly said that it was clear from recent inspection reports and from the MHC’s annual report for 2021 that there were significant issues in several inpatient mental health centres in the Cork region that need to be addressed.

“The reports indicate a need for the HSE to improve governance, management, and oversight of investment in Cork, particularly when they have shown in other areas and in other counties a clear capability to wisely use the funds allocated to it by the State.

“In the interim, where we see significant breaches of conditions, the MHC is forced, under law, to use our enforcement powers, up to and including prosecution,” Mr Farrelly said in a statement in which the MHC confirmed it was prosecuting the HSE over a breach of legislation at a Cork facility.

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The MHC initiated the prosecution against the HSE over what it alleges was a breach of a condition attached to the registration of the inpatient mental health centre at St Stephen’s Psychiatric Hospital in Glanmire on the outskirts of Cork City.

When the case was called before Judge Marian O’Leary at Cork District Court on Wednesday, barrister for the MHC, Eoghan O’Sullivan BL said the HSE allegedly breached a condition of its registration of St Stephen’s Hospital by admitting a patient into the acute centre in December 2021.

Mr O’Sullivan said that inspections at the hospital over several years highlighted issues of concern and he said that a condition had been imposed on the hospital’s registration, prohibiting the admittance of new patients into the acute centre.

Mr O’Sullivan told the judge that the MHC would allege that the HSE did allow a patient to be transferred into the acute centre in breach of registration conditions. He noted, however, that there are some exceptions to the conditions.

Solicitor for the HSE, Catherine Kelleher, said that the matter would be fully contested, stressing that the patient was an “exceptionally vulnerable” person. Ms Kelleher applied for a four-week adjournment which the judge granted, adjourning the matter until November 16th for mention.

The MHC is an independent statutory body whose primary functions are to foster and promote high standards of care and good practice in the delivery of mental health services and to ensure that the interests of those involuntarily admitted are protected, pursuant to the Mental Health Act 2001.

An MHC spokesman explained that to operate an inpatient mental health service in Ireland, the service must be registered as an “approved centre” with the MHC and upon registration, the service must comply with regulations and rules made under the Mental Health Act 2001.

“Failure to comply with regulations and rules may result in enforcement action. This can include corrective and preventive action plans, an immediate action notice, a regulatory compliance meeting, registration conditions, removal from the register, ie closure, and prosecution.”

St Stephen’s Psychiatric Hospital is a former TB sanatorium, located near Glanmire village, some seven kilometres from Cork City centre and it provides some 87 beds for inpatient treatment at four separate units on the hospital’s 117 acres of land.