Ms Caron McCaffrey:

The Deputy mentioned that people find themselves coming in contact with the criminal justice system by virtue of having a mental illness and as a result of some of the behaviours that they might demonstrate. Recently we published the mental health task force report, which considered three areas, the first area being diversion. So where the Garda comes in contact with people whose predominantly presenting issue is a mental illness, there is a diversionary pathway to take them to access appropriate services so that they do not have to be taken into a custodial setting to ensure their safety and the safety of the public. The report shows quite a lot of work has been done on that and there are a lot of recommendations.

The report also contains recommendations on ways to manage people with mental illness, particularly people with severe and enduring mental illness within our population. So at any one time the National Forensic Mental Health Service, which provides an excellent inreach service to us, manages about 250 people who have severe and enduring mental illness. I am talking about psychosis and-or schizophrenia. We are looking at ways at how we can better manage that population within the prison system and potentially looking at a dedicated unit where people, while awaiting admission to the Central Mental Hospital and where they could return to from the CMH, so that we can keep them in as therapeutic an environment as we can. To be clear, prisons are not therapeutic environments and they are not conducive to delivering treatment for severe and enduring mental illness.

The third part of the report was recommendations on care. It is really important where somebody is stabilised in a custodial setting that there is a very clear pathway for him or her out into accessing services within the community. A group has been established to oversee the implementation of the report, which I think is hugely important in terms of changing the landscape for people with severe and enduring mental illness coming in contact with the criminal justice system at all. I ask my colleague, Mr. Black, to comment on the issue. I think the Deputy asked how the Prison Service deals with violent and disruptive prisoners and we can address her question.