Dr. Susan Finnerty:

There is a mixture of facilities around the country. Some of them are new, very well built, provide single room accommodation and are spacious with plenty of communal space and so on. The rest of the stock is quite old. While we are not looking at the Victorian asylums we are looking at facilities built decades ago and the fabric and maintenance of those are problematic. The Deputy will note from many of our reports that keeping up the maintenance of these units is quite difficult. There are issues around structure, declaration and fire safety. With the regulations we have we can make sure the services provide maintenance and keep the units clean and hygienic but it is a difficult task for some of the services to do that.

To answer the Deputy’s question about the Act, with the Act will come a review of the regulations. The regulation on premises could certainly be reviewed to ensure there is tighter regulation around premises. Even with the current regulation, we are able to pick up where facilities are not up to standard.