LEGAL ARGUMENT will continue today in the High Court in a case in which a woman detained by gardaí as she was out walking in south Dublin complains that she is being improperly held in a psychiatric hospital.
Yesterday, a lawyer for St Patrick’s Hospital read out a statement saying the hospital would not in any way ever condone anything improper in relation to any patient brought there.
Pauline Walley SC, counsel for the hospital, its clinical director and one of its leading consultant psychiatrists, told Mr Justice Bryan McMahon she had been instructed to make the statement in court.
She was representing the three respondents to an application by a 69-year-old Co Dublin woman for a declaration that she had been unlawfully detained by them on December 9th last after having been arrested by gardaí while out for a walk with her son.
Colman Fitzgerald SC, counsel for the woman, whose name is being withheld from publication, told the court yesterday it had been thought earlier that she had been walking with her husband when the arrest took place.
The court had heard that the woman, who periodically suffers from mental illness and a religious preoccupation, had been taken to the hospital late at night by gardaí who had arrested her while walking on a footpath in south Dublin.
Mr Fitzgerald, who appeared with Michael Lynn, told the court she claimed to have been unlawfully detained in St Patrick’s after having been left in the care of hospital staff by gardaí.
She had been arrested on foot of an application by her husband to the family doctor, who had issued a recommendation she be involuntarily committed to St Patrick’s.
Mr Fitzgerald submitted that the use of gardaí in her admission had rendered it unlawful.
Ms Walley told the court that any alleged “mischief” complained of had occurred prior to the woman having been received by the hospital, in accordance with the procedures as laid down under the Mental Health Act.
Her solicitor, Anthony Fay, had represented her interests at a tribunal of inquiry into her detention set up by the Mental Health Commission within days of her admission.
The tribunal had on December 19th affirmed the necessity of the patient to be detained and had recommended her further detention.
A consultant psychiatrist signed a renewal of admission for four weeks, ending on January 16th next.
In the meantime, her detention for her own protection and treatment would be further inquired into by a commission tribunal on January 8th.
Ms Walley said the hospital and staff had nothing to do with the intervention of gardaí in the woman having been brought to St Patrick’s, and it was wrong to seek to taint as unlawful what had happened after her reception in the hospital.
The hearing was adjourned for continuation of legal argument until today.