Dr. John Hillery:

We have the tools, I think, with IT and so on to make it easier. Dr. Finnerty in our report does remark on the fact that GPs use a system called Healthlink whereby they can get information from hospitals and send referrals into hospitals, yet CAMHS has no access to that. That would be a way of transmitting information. The basic systems seem to be there but are not being used.

As regards the transfer of powers, I wonder whom I can upset in either Department this evening. Our parent Department is the Department of Health except for the Decision Support Service. As to what I think the Department should be doing, I think I have said already that, from our point of view, the Department should be looking at giving the Mental Health Commission the power to set standards for and regulate community services, including children's services. It is planned that that will be in the new Act. We have been waiting for a while. I think the committee will recall the dates I referred to in my statement. We have been waiting quite a few years and we know that legislation can take a while to get through, but within the current legislation it is possible for us to be given those powers. We would have to get some extra resources as well, but we have a long history of preparing standards and we do that, of course, by consulting both the people using the services and the people delivering the services. It is not that we sit in an ivory tower and just write out things we think people should do. We have the skills and the experience of doing that but we need to be given the power to do it. Professor Lucey referred to the fact that he can go anywhere a mental health service is being delivered and have a look at it and comment on it. That is a good power to have, I suppose, but as regards the national issue and the need for our individual children and adolescents to have a service, it does not set standards, it does not bring equality and it does not answer some of the questions Deputy Tully and Senator Flynn, for instance, were asking. I have said that to the Department; I will be saying it again.