Cuan Mhuire Drug Treatment Centre

On Thursday night I attended a seminar in Athy’s Art Centre on drugs and alcohol addiction.  In the 140 years since it was built the Centre, which doubles as the Methodist Church on Sundays, can hardly ever have hosted a more important gathering.  Young people were to the fore as the Chairman of the Joint Policing Committee, Councillor James Mahon, introduced the speakers.

One such speaker, a young man, now a volunteer in Athy’s Cuan Mhuire, introduced himself as a recovering heroin addict and an alcoholic.  He spoke eloquently and movingly of his life as an addict and how he had managed to turn his life around while a resident in Cuan Mhuire.  It was an inspiring address which received a well deserved round of applause from the audience which filled the 100 seater auditorium.  Listening to the young man, whose name regrettably I omitted to note, I thought of the difficulties presented to the founder of Cuan Mhuire after she had opened the Centre in Athy.  Sister Consilio’s story is well known and has been chronicled in the past by several writers.  What may not be so well known or remembered are the difficulties presented for Sr. Consilio and her team of volunteers when some of the civic leaders of Athy raised objections to her drug rehabilitation centre in the town.  I recall members of Athy Urban District Council expressing fears as to the consequences of having a drug treatment unit in Cuan Mhuire, which the more pessimistic of them felt would inevitably draw ‘a bad rough crowd to the South Kildare town’.  Indeed the concerns expressed found voice also amongst many townspeople.  Those fears proved in the long term to be unfounded, even though there was a period in the Centre’s early life when the business of the local District Court devoted an inordinate amount of time to persons associated, rightly or wrongly, with Cuan Mhuire.

Cuan Mhuire today provides residential detoxification and treatment for alcohol, drugs and other addictions.  The Athy Centre, founded in 1966, was the first Cuan Mhuire in Ireland.  Today there are Cuan Mhuire treatment centres in Bruree, Co. Limerick, Coolarne, Co. Galway, Farnanes, Co. Cork and Newry Town.  There are also a number of after care centres providing facilities for addicts in recovery and their families.  Seven of these centres are located in counties Tipperary, Monaghan, Limerick, Kerry, Galway, Cork and Dublin.  To complete the treatment programme residential transition houses are available to allow former Cuan Mhuire residents to live independently until they can secure their own accommodation.  Five such houses are located throughout Ireland. 

The open door policy practiced by Cuan Mhuire provides a unique treatment programme for approximately 3,000 persons every year.  It is a venture which was first started by Sr. Consilio of the Sisters of Mercy in a disused building attached to the Mercy Convent in Athy.  As a member of the Mercy congregation Sister Consilio received support and assistance from the members of her local convent and from her Sisters of Mercy superiors.  The continued success of the Cuan Mhuire venture, which is now the country’s largest multi site addiction treatment provider, is further proof of the outstanding work by members of the Sisters of Mercy since the congregation’s foundation in 1831.

The seminar in the Arts Centre brought home to me the extraordinary achievements of Sr. Consilio and her team of volunteers over the last 46 years.  It was the unscripted talk given by the young recovering heroin addict which awakened in me the realisation that Cuan Mhuire has proved to be a wonderful example of what can be achieved by determination and an unwillingness to accept failure.  Sr. Consilio and the young man who spoke in the Arts Centre last Thursday evening should be an inspiration for us all. 

Congratulations to everyone involved in organising the seminar and staffing the various stands which offered material on community based services for those afflicted by addiction or otherwise troubled in their lives.  It was an excellently organised and well attended function, no doubt thanks to the hard work of the Rapid organisation, Sergeant Tom Harte of the local Garda Station and the Joint Policing Committee  chaired by Councillor William Mahon.

Athy Heritage Centre will be the venue for a lecture entitled ‘Titanic – Kildare Connections’ by the author James Durney on Tuesday, 10^th April at 7.30 p.m.  I understand there is no admission fee.  The lecture is being held in conjunction with the exhibition presently in the Heritage Centre on ‘Athy in 1912’, the year that the world’s most luxurious liner sank on its maiden voyage. 

Sr. Consilio

Sr. Consilio. The name immediately conjures up images, not of a woman in Holy Orders, but rather of a movement which now reaches across the length and breadth of Ireland. Cuan Mhuire, meaning the Harbour of Mary, are homes for the care and rehabilitation of those with alcohol dependency problems and are located in Athy, Bruree, Newry and Athenry. They exist because Sr. Consilio, a member of the Sisters of Mercy congregation in Athy, sought to provide a service for people, whose needs she felt, had been overlooked by society.

Born Eileen Fitzgerald in 1937, she began training as a nurse in Cork in 1956. Soon the religious life beckoned. Her own sister, Ita, was in Ardee Convent of Mercy and on her suggestion Eileen Fitzgerald entered the Convent of Mercy in Athy, after qualifying as a nurse. Her noviceship was spent there, but in 1965 she transferred to the local St. Vincent’s Hospital, where the Sisters of Mercy had provided nursing care since 1873. It was here that she first came in regular contact with men and women suffering from alcoholism. Her concern for their welfare found support in the compassionate outlook of Sr. Dominic, Matron of St. Vincent’s Hospital. Before long however, she was transferred to St. Finbar’s Hospital in Cork to complete her midwifery studies, which when completed, saw her returning to the Athy Convent.

Sr. Consilio’s charitable response to the needs of those troubled by alcohol addiction encouraged those requiring help to call on her at the local Convent of Mercy. In time, the small library room in the Convent building became a meeting place for alcoholics. In 1968 the library was deemed unsuitable for the numbers attending, and it was then that the dairy house attached to the Convent was given over for the use of Sr. Consilio’s group. This became the first Cuan Mhuire residential centre in Ireland.

In 1971, Sr. Consilio, determined to provide accommodation for the men and women seeking help from the torment of alcoholism, agreed to buy 70 acres of farm land at Cardenton, Athy. The purchase price at auction was £49,000.00, and when the property was knocked down to her, she did not have that money. Fate played its hand when the vendor died before the legal formalities could be completed, resulting in a lengthy delay, which allowed Sr. Consilio sufficient time to raise the necessary funds. The first buildings on the Cardenton lands were planned and erected by members of her group, all of whom brought their own talents and skills to the work. Building work began in 1972, with Paddy Lalor of Woodstock Street as the only contractor employed on the site.

The early success of Cuan Mhuire was achieved despite the misgivings of some members of the local community in Athy to the siting of an alcohol treatment centre near to their town. Over time however, the local opposition to the centre evaporated, as it became clear that Sr. Consilio’s mission was fulfilling an important need in Irish society.

The mission statement of Cuan Mhuire is an affirmation of the relevance of Sr. Consilio’s work in every community “to provide a context in which persons who feel rejected or dejected because of their addictions become aware of and learn to deal with the underlying problems related to those addictions and discover their uniqueness, goodness, giftedness and real purpose in life.”

In 1975 Sr. Consilio received a Person of the Year Award for her work and in the following year the second Cuan Mhuire was opened in Bruree House, Bruree, Co. Limerick. The continuing demand for Cuan Mhuire services led to the opening of another centre in the former Good Shepherd Convent, Newry in 1984. Two years later, Galilee, a house of prayer was opened in what was the former Fever Hospital in Athy.

The facilities originally provided at Cuan Mhuire, Athy, were replaced by a modern complex which was opened on the 14th of June 1992 by the Superior General of the Sister of Mercy. This was followed by the opening of the fourth Cuan Mhuire in Coolarne, Athenry, Co. Galway and an after care facility in the former O’Briens Hotel, Gardiner Street, Dublin. This latter facility provides short term drug free residential accommodation for those who have attended Cuan Mhuire for treatment. Overnight accommodation is not yet available, but in the meantime the city centre complex operates as a drop-in centre.

Today the four Cuan Mhuires provide places for 418 persons suffering from alcoholism. It is a proud tradition of Cuan Mhuire, that regardless of circumstances, no person is refused admission or treatment. This in itself can create problems, but given the inspirational leadership and dedication of Sr. Consilio and the Cuan Mhuire staff there is no reason to doubt the continuing success of the Cuan Mhuire Alcohol Recovery Programme.

Equally, I have no doubt that the future of the Cuan Mhuire movement is assured. So much of what has happened in its formative years was due, largely, if not solely, to one woman - Sr. Consilio. In time to come her name will be remembered alongside that of Catherine McAuley, Mary Aikenhead, Nano Nagle, and those other great women in religion, who stirred an Irish nation’s conscience by tackling the social problems of their day.