Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their submissions and for the work they do. We do not do that often enough. We need to constantly recognise the work of the groups that appear before this committee.

In preparation for this meeting, I went through different cases and looked at some of the headlines, including headlines such as court releases man as Central Mental Hospital full, unmedicated and untreated patients at Central Mental Hospital moved to jails because of bed shortage and mentally ill patients being kept in prison due to bed shortages. That gives a flavour of the difficulties in society.

Ms Malone said that services are at crisis levels. Professor Kennedy described the services as being at the edge of safe levels. Clearly, there is a crisis in services. We know the Portrane facility is being built and will be ready in 2020, but will that additional capacity resolve the bed crisis in the system?

We know the prison population reflects what is happening in society. There is a crisis in homelessness. Increasingly, we see that the young people involved in selling and taking drugs are getting younger and younger. I know of children as young as seven years of age acting as runners for drug dealers. That is possibly the profile of young children coming into the prison system. Many of the families contacting public representatives tell us their son or daughter has a mental health issue and that they believe their child will be safer in the prison system. Is that the experience of the witnesses?

We heard about over-crowding, violence and so on which are part of the system and the fact that some jails are probably more dangerous than others. We speak of the need for a 24-7 mental health services in the prison service. Are there times that 24-7 mental health services cannot be delivered? Are some prisons worse than others in that regard? Is it worse at the weekend with staff not available and so on?

Mental health screening was mentioned. St. Patrick's Institution was mentioned and the 23%, and I suppose that screening was done a number of years ago. We do not have the staff in Oberstown. Is that screening going on anywhere else? Will it be higher because of the problems on the outside?

Solitary confinement was mentioned in one of the submissions. Of the 514 prisoners on a restricted regime, 325 had been held on 21 hour lockup. The duration of the time is not generally published. Some 51 prisoners were held in solitary confinement in January 2016, of whom nine had spent more than one year in isolation. Is solitary confinement used as a means of controlling prisoners, many of whom may have mental health issues for which the supports are not available?