Ms Ber Grogan:

HAIL housing is one of our members. They do great work. Before our pre-budget submission launch we had a public survey and we also went out to our member organisations to get feedback from them. Martine Ferland, the CEO of HAIL, said to us that a challenge HAIL encounters is the ongoing under-funding of tenancy sustainment support services for people with mental health difficulties. Government funding has not increased in over seven years for tenancy support services and the funding currently does not match the full staff and management costs. The discussion around tenancy sustainment and approved housing bodies links in with what we are talking about. Some people have families, supporters, carers and communities around them, but what about people who do not? A person's network could be the tenancy sustainment officer or supported housing like in HAIL; the people who are going to link you up with other advocacy services or talk to you about the decision support service and your rights. We always have to come back and remember the voices that are not at the table as well, who are not getting the information and do not have those wider support networks around them.

The prison piece we are working on was given ethical approval in 2019 and then this little thing called Covid-19 happened. It put a bit of a stop to things. It is a mapping of the mental health services in prisons across the country for which we already have the HSE funding. Recently, we were waiting for the justice report from the high level task force, which looked at mental health and addiction in prisons. We have restarted those conversations with the Prison Service. Everyone agrees it is something that needs to be looked at in more detail. If you have a quick glance at the literature, you know that people with mental health difficulties and intellectual disabilities - those marginalised groups - are overrepresented in prison populations. It is something we are looking at and we are glad to see that there is an appetite to find out what the research is behind it and to try to get some evidence-based pieces. That is coming down the line. We have found with the director of the Prison Service that there is definitely an appetite for the research to take place, so I hope that goes ahead unhindered.