Ms Anne O'Connor:

The committee should note that this is part of the clinical programme. The clinical programme is scoping what is available. There are different versions, but most mental health teams currently deal with people who have addiction problems as well. The difficulty for us is that they do not all have specific addiction counselling.

This is one of the challenges for us in developing the services. It is important that people do not come to a mental health service simply to access addiction counselling. Such people need to be managed in primary care. That is what we are trying to develop with our colleagues in primary care. The idea is to have that first line of defence in primary care, where there is access to addiction counselling and mental health supports.