Mr. Pablo Rojas Coppari:

On top of the pressure being undocumented there is also the fact that to access any service from the HSE, be it for mental or physical health a person needs to be ordinarily resident in the State. This is determined by the HSE by the type of legal status that a person has in the country. Whereas mental health and physical health providers have the discretion to overlook the fact that a person does not have legal status in the country and to continue providing health services - and luckily a lot of them still do - they can refuse. There are certain services where the discretion can no longer be applied and people can no longer be referred in to the service because they do not have the correct immigration status and so on. There is also the risk of incurring extra costs because if one does not have full access to the health system, as would a full resident, then a person could end up getting billed. As Ms. Rashimi has said, a lot of people do not disclose their undocumented status and a proper diagnosis cannot be ascertained.