PATIENTS AT THE new Central Mental Hospital in Portrane have been forced to sleep in their clothes and wear jackets indoors due to issues with the heating system at the €220 million facility, internal documents have revealed.

Staff formally raised concerns about “extreme cold” at the hospital 25 times over a 33-day period after it officially opened last November, and complaints continued into the new year.

A family member of a long-term inpatient at the facility, who did not wish to be identified, said he had asked for a sleeping bag due to “ice-cold” conditions, and claimed people in the hospital were being treated less favourably because of their mental incapacity.

“They’re being treated as subhuman, because this would not be tolerated in another hospital,” she said. “If so much as a radiator was broken in Beaumont [Hospital], there’d be uproar and something would be done about it in two seconds flat.”

On 17 November, a staff member reported that a female patient was sleeping in her clothes “due to her room being too cold”, noting that there were “a lot of complaints” about low temperatures in the bedrooms.

Two days later, there were three separate reports regarding low temperatures at the facility. Both “staff and patients” had raised concerns, while “all patients [were] complaining the bedrooms are cold at night”.

On 23 November, it was reported that patients were using switches on the wall of their rooms “attempting to increase the heat in the room”, but this was “not working”.

The following week, a staff member noted that a female patient was “still complaining” that her room was too cold, despite previous efforts to increase the temperature. “I don’t know if anything else can be done?” they added.

Staff also complained that the temperature in the nursing office was “locked” at 15 degrees, which was described as “not warm enough”. “All the night staff want is the ability to adjust the settings on the thermostat themselves,” they said.

On 6 December, there was “no heating in the art and craft room”, and it was “extremely cold” in a cleaners room “even after days when the wall stat was turned up”.

Internal documents released under Freedom of Information laws also reveal problems with heating in a TV room at the hospital, where it was “very cold and many patients have resorted to wearing jackets inside”.

“The heating system seems to not be working at all in this room in particular,” it added.

The family member of a patient at the facility said they sent him extra warm clothes to wear indoors, and claimed that the issue has yet to be resolved.

“He doesn’t complain. Probably none of them complain. That’s the problem, they’re voiceless, and that’s being taken advantage of. They need others to speak up,” she said.

The log of complaints regarding cold temperatures and problems with the heating system had a total of 25 entries between 14 November and 17 December, and complaints continued into January 2023. The log for subsequent months was not available.

However, a spokesman for the HSE insisted that the heating system has operated “as required and throughout” the hospital. “We have not experienced any ongoing issues with our heating system.”

“When patients and staff moved to the facility in November 2022, some adjustments were made regulating the heating temperature in specific rooms for individual patients,” he added.

The state-of-the-art facility, called the National Forensic Mental Health Service Hospital, cost €220 million to build on the campus of the former St Ita’s Psychiatric Hospital in Portrane, replacing the 171-year-old Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum.