Sir, - Dr Dermot Walsh, Inspector of Mental Hospitals, refers (August 24th) to his "forthright criticisms of conditions in the Mental Handicap Unit in St Ita's Hospital, Portrane - conditions which have since been greatly improved". It took rather more than the inspector's reports to bring about improvements.
Since 1976 the people most interested in conditions at the hospital were forced to engage in public demonstrations of one kind or another to attract media attention to conditions there. I regret to say that most of the improvements took place following the exposure of some shameful scandals.
In more recent years a visit by the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities was particularly fruitful, especially in persuading the Eastern Health Board to do something about fire arrangements. In 1998, the situation at the hospital was brought to the attention of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at Geneva. A transcript of a radio programme presented by Vincent Browne was immensely useful on that occasion, as were extracts from the Inspector's reports.
I do not, for one instant, wish to minimise the role of the Inspector of Mental Hospitals. Nobody would want to lose the office or the reports again (as referred to in my book, Walls of Silence), but like Vincent Browne, I think they would be more effective if they were published more promptly.
As for the improvements in the Mental Handicap section at Portrane, they are painfully slow in coming. Only last week a small group of parents came across a dormitory for women patients. Some years ago, a larger dormitory had been partitioned in such a way as to block off all the windows from the side where the women sleep. This reconstruction left the women with little light and no view. The Mental Handicap section is in need of constant attention from the Inspector of Mental Hospitals. - Yours, etc., Annie Ryan,
Avondale Lawn, Blackrock, Co Dublin.