Dr. John Hillery:

Four areas were mentioned. The first is the law. The college has asked that there would be a specific law relating to children because they are different from adults and also the current Mental Health Act does not have a human rights approach to children in that they do not have the same protections as adults under the law. We feel that should change. My colleague already said how we did not have an opportunity to give direct feedback into the development of the recommendations for a new law. We hope we will get more of a chance in the future.

As regards recruitment for medicine, the MacCraith report which came out in 2014 gives very clear and practical guidelines on how to ensure the doctors we train here stay here and how the doctors we employ here continue to practise here rather than leaving the country. We have called on many occasions for the HSE to implement the report, which is a very good report, in several stages. It was recently backed up by the report of Professor Frank Keane and his group looking at recruitment and retention of the medical workforce in Ireland.

As my colleague, Professor Kelly, has said, medication has its place. We do not support its use when it should not be used. I could add to that though that we do see patients presenting with a need for medication because they did not get intervention at an earlier stage of the course of their illness, which might have prevented them reaching that stage.

As regards suicidality, we could have a whole week on that here. Obviously, people who are experiencing suicidal ideation and suicidal intent need appropriate psychiatric assessments, but we also know that for young people there is the issue of societal exclusion and how we deal with that. There are simple things that could be done through the Oireachtas to improve inclusion of young people. We have a lot of national organisations that are working very hard to do this. Some of them are subject to taxes, which take some of their money away. I speak of sporting organisations, for instance, and it should be quite simple for the Oireachtas to take steps to ensure our community organisations are not penalised financially for the work they are doing, often done by volunteers but they are still having to pay rates and other things for buildings where they try to bring young people and get them involved in things. The big issue, other than mental illness, is exclusion from society.