A CO DUBLIN woman was arrested while out walking with her husband and brought by gardaí to St Patrick's Mental Hospital, Dublin, where she has been detained for the past three weeks, the High Court heard yesterday.
Mr Justice Bryan McMahon yesterday ordered she be brought to the High Court today and directed the hospital's clinical director to justify the lawfulness of her detention.
The judge supported an application by Colman Fitzgerald SC, counsel for the woman, that she or her family not be identified in media reports.
Mr Fitzgerald told the court the woman had been out for a walk in mid December with her husband when members of the Garda Síochána pulled up alongside them and arrested her despite her objections.
He said the woman's doctor, at the behest of her husband, had signed an Involuntary Detention Order and the GP had sought the help of the Garda in having her brought to hospital.
Mr Fitzgerald sought an order of habeas corpus under Article 40 of the Constitution seeking a judicial inquiry into the legality of her continued detention. He said the patient had responded well to treatment and wanted to get home. He said the Mental Health Act set out in very precise terms the circumstances under which members of the Garda Síochána could take an active part in procedures surrounding the involuntary detention of citizens.
Gardaí could become involved of their own volition in circumstances where they were of the opinion there was a serious likelihood the person would cause immediate harm to themselves or others.
Mr Fitzgerald said gardaí could also lawfully be brought in by a clinical director of a hospital or by a consultant psychiatrist acting on her/his own behalf or on behalf of a general practitioner.
In the case before the court the general practitioner had, without lawful authority under the Act, requested gardaí to detain the patient.
He said an appeal seeking to overturn the Involuntary Admission Order had been brought before the Mental Health Tribunal which had affirmed the order on the grounds it did not have the jurisdiction to revoke it.
Mr Fitzgerald said if an unlawful detention order could be transmuted to a lawful one simply by rewriting it then such a situation would apply to any breach of the citizen's constitutional rights, however heinous.
Mr Justice McMahon said the matter before the court was a serious one and quite clearly the legislature had it in mind that before gardaí would become involved in such detention, a certain number of specific conditions would be adhered to.
In a separate case, the court also directed a judicial inquiry into the legality of the detention of a male patient at St Brendan's Mental Hospital, Dublin.
The High Court heard claims that the man was being detained for a further 12 months on foot of an incomplete renewal of admission order covering the extent of his illness.