Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 8 December 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters
Decongregation of Mental Health Settings: Mental Health Commission
Mr. John Farrelly:
We want to be regulators of the community services, including CAMHS, which we are not. Under the current Act, we do not have those powers. We only regulate the inpatient approved centres. Notwithstanding different issues, we have managed to get compliance up to around 85% nationally. We do not regulate community CAMHS. In fact, we have absolutely no powers whatsoever with regard to the inspections. We want the Mental Health Act changed to give us powers in order that we will be able to set standards, codes and rules that people would have to adhere to. We genuinely do not have them. We are also doing a review. We stepped in to say we wanted to do that independent review, which Dr. Finnerty is doing. We will publish that report and there are significant issues. We do not have the capability to change it. We need the laws to be in place to make people stick to the laws.
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