HEALTH MINISTER LEO Varadkar has said its not possible for him to intervene in the case of an Irish girl being held against her will in an English psychiatric hospital.
He was responding to a front-page story in this morning’s Sunday Times, detailing the teenage girl’s case.
The 18-year-old has been diagnosed as having an unstable personality disorder, and was transferred to the UK in late 2013. The paper revealed that she had written a letter to Varadkar asking for help to return home.
The High Court heard a HSE application to continue her detention in the UK on Wednesday, because it believes she’s a high suicide risk. A report on the hearing in the Irish Times included the text of a poem she had written to oppose that application.
Speaking on RTÉ’s The Week In Politics, Varadkar said it was “a very sensitive case” and that his sympathies were with the girl.
However, he said he didn’t have a role to play in the case.
“This is a matter before the courts and no minister in any democracy can interfere in what happens in the courts,” Varadkar said.
Secondly, it’s a clinical matter and its not my role as minister to overrule clinical decisions made by doctors in the best interests of the patient any more than the education minister can change the Leaving Cert results or the environment minister can change a planning permission.
“My role is a particular role and its not one that involves intervening in court cases or making individual clinical decisions.”
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