Joan Freeman (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to apologise to everyone for being late. It was totally unavoidable. Forgive me if I make some comments that people have already made.

As some of the witnesses may know, I come from the real world in many ways. We need to be real. We do not know whether the people who are here today will be back again when there is another election. That is the reality. We do not know when there will be an election. It could be the end of this year or next year. Most people will be back although I probably will not be.

What Deputy Rabbitte said was spot-on when she talked about a solution-focused approach. That is really and truly the only thing that works. Ms Ward came up with a really good comprehensive list of needs. That is something each of the committee members could take on board and fight for. What happens if we do not do that? We will leave this meeting today and probably file our reports but that will be the end of it. If we want to see solutions we have to go to the people who we believe will fight for us.

One area I am obviously interested in is mental health. I was busy last year with a particular campaign. One thing stopped me in my tracks. I was listening to a young girl being interviewed on the radio. She said that she dreads lifting the blanket from her body when she wakes up in the morning because she knows it is the start of another day. This was from a child in a hotel or bed and breakfast accommodation. That stopped me in my tracks. Reference was made to looking at mental health. Looking at it is one thing but what the hell is happening? What can we do? What can I do to help the Children's Rights Alliance and the Ombudsman for Children with that aspect of it? I might not be able to do anything but I believe we should be thinking about what this Government can do for the next six to eight months, because really that is all we have. Let us be real about it.

We can talk about legislation and introducing things into the Constitution but that is all long term. I have learned one thing from being here for three years. It has taken me three years to get a tiny tranche of legislation through the Seanad, and it is still not through the Dáil. Again, we need to be real about this.