Mr. Gary Kiernan:

I can address the point about Garda stations. When people become acutely unwell, their first point of contact should not be in a Garda station. There is a system through the HSE of authorised officers who are trained psychiatric nurses and ideally they are the best placed people to support people when they become acutely unwell in the community so somebody is not brought into a Garda station and their distress increased. Our submission called for that process to become much more widespread and for those authorised officers to fully trained and resourced so that people's first experience of care is not in a Garda station where it can exacerbate problems for people.