Judge Neilan expressed his disappointment that he was unable to deal with a case involving a woman with an address at St Loman’s Hospital because Gardaí were not prepared for a hearing.
Inspector Jarlath Folan told the court he was not aware the case had been listed for hearing and did not have a witness.
The woman refused to accept bail with the condition that she remain at St Loman’s Hospital and spoke in graphic terms of how the Mullingar area had negative associations for her.
She said she would go to St Loman’s “over my dead body”.
Judge Neilan also expressed his concerns regarding the contradiction between information given in a report by Dr Gráinne Flynn that the woman was fit to plead and had agreed to go to St Loman’s hospital.
He said he had anticipated that Mr Louis Kiernan would defend the case in which the woman is charged with assault and threatening behaviour at St Loman’s on the basis that she was so unwell at the time, she could not have been mentally competent to commit the crime.
A person cannot be convicted of a crime unless it is accepted he or she had the ‘mens rea’ or mental capacity to commit it. The judge recalled how Garda David Mead had described how totally incoherent the woman was when he arrested her in January.
He also pointed out that it had taken four weeks of care between Mountjoy women’s prison and the Central Mental Hospital to stabilise the woman so that she could appear in court.
He said he had considered how to deal with the case and would have called for an independent psychiatric assessment of the woman by an expert from outside the State because of his concern that the diagnosis of personality disorder meant the woman could not be facilitated in St Loman’s and had to be removed to prison.
At the end of the hearing the woman became extremely distressed and refused to remain in Mullingar.
Judge Neilan remanded her in Mountjoy prison for two weeks.
