Ms Fiona Coyle:

This is one of the most significant changes that will impact the lives of the service users and the family carers and supporters. In that regard, Mental Health Reform has been broadly in agreement with what has been proposed but there is a need to take stock of how this will happen, what resources will be needed, how this will be rolled out and that all-important communication piece. Such a significant change could cause some fear in service users and we have been hearing about that already, such as how this will work and whether the situation will be worse than it is at present. There is a piece of work there for the Department, in partnership with the HSE, in scoping out how this can be run and to communicate it to those who are using the services.