The Mental Health Commission has told a court sitting in west Cork it is very concerned that the HSE has failed to rectify issues the commission had raised in relation to the acute mental health unit in Bantry, despite being given numerous opportunities to do so.
The HSE is appealing a condition attached to the registration of the Centre for Mental Health Care and Recovery in Bantry, which requires the number of patients who can be treated there to be reduced from 18 to 11.
The unit is located on the campus of Bantry General Hospital.
The district court will hear an appeal by the HSE against the attachment of the condition, after an earlier appeal by the executive to the Chief Executive of the Mental Health Commission, John Farrelly, was rejected.
Today, the district court in Bantry was told that any decision made there will, in effect, be final.
Solicitor for the HSE, Katharine Kelleher, told the court a decision had been made to provide up to €1.5m for the removal of risks, such as ligature points at the Bantry facility.
She said the decision by the Mental Health Commission would mean four and three-bed rooms at the facility would be reduced to a maximum of two people per room, while all double rooms would be reduced to single occupancy. This would represent a 40% reduction in capacity.
Ms Kelleher said the issues were of great concern to the HSE and to the commission, as well as to the local population catchment of around 60,000 people.
She said the acute mental health unit in Bantry was operational since January 1996 and is one of the older centres in the country.
Ms Kelleher estimated that the hearing of the appeal could take two days.
Solicitor for the Mental Health Commission, Zoe Richardson, said the commission was very concerned that issues that it had raised with the HSE had not been addressed, even though the executive had been given numerous opportunities to do so.
Both agreed that the quality of care patients received at the unit in Bantry was not at issue.
The HSE claims the Mental Health Commission has not fully set out the basis for the reduction in bed capacity, or given the executive credit for efforts that it made to address the issues.
Judge James McNulty said the matter was of great import, with far-reaching implications.
He listed the case for mention to fix a date on 12 January, and suggested that 30 and 31 January were the most likely dates for the appeal to be heard.
The condition attached to the registration of the Centre for Mental Health Care and Recovery in Bantry cannot be enforced until after the appeal is heard in the district court.
The Mental Health Commission is the regulator for the acute mental health sector in this country. It conducts annual inspections and issues reports on its findings.
These reports are public documents and are available for inspection on the commission's website.
RTÉ News understands that the Mental Health Commission has been concerned for some time about the physical infrastructure in Bantry: the building that houses the acute mental health unit.
In its report on Bantry in 2021, the Mental Health Commission described the non-compliance of the building housing the unit there as "critical".
When inspectors returned in recent weeks and found that those deficiencies had not been addressed, a decision was made to attach a condition to the unit's registration to reduce the maximum number of patients who can be accommodated there from 18 to 11.
