Mr. Seamus Hempenstall:

I do not think there is any impetus behind rushing the committee into anything. What we have is a fairly comprehensive general scheme in which many of the legislative provisions are already written up. It is with the Office of the Attorney General at the moment. I cannot say I have done pre-legislative scrutiny before but we would not engage in this process without trying to take into account what the committee says.

We have had the consultation and a lot of time has gone by. There was another round of top-up consultation. I would expect that, as part of this process, if the subcommittee raised concerns we would try to take them into account in conjunction with the drafting process being undertaken by the Attorney General. As I said, things will always arise that we did not foresee. There may well be drafting issues associated with particular provisions too. It is a kind of living process. What I tried to get across in my opening statement was that the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, want to move the legislation forward as quickly as possible but not in the sense of guillotining any debate. It is a huge piece of legislation with significant pieces of policy at the top and a lot of technical things at the bottom. They are all important and they all need to get done. It is an interesting piece of legislation from that perspective. There is momentum behind getting it done now, but that is not to shorten any process of consideration.

Earlier, the Senator asked about costings and I said I did not have any. I see from my note that the Mental Health Commission did supply us with its own estimates and figures. I will send the information that we have from the commission to the Senator. The Department has not agreed any figures or plans. That part of my answer is right.