Dr. John Hillery:

I keep repeating the need for someone setting standards and monitoring them. The standards would include access. In Dr. Finnerty’s report, she has several recommendations around access, one of which applies to children from the Traveller community. As I said in my submission, it is a very good report. However, do we just look back on it as a report in a few years’ time or will it be implemented? That is why – sorry I keep repeating the same thing – we want the power to monitor the introduction of the report independently and then the powers to set standards for children’s mental health service, which would apply to all children in the State. Obviously, we need people with certain specialist training trying to support certain groups but, initially, the main thing is to guarantee access because we have many silos and barriers.

I remember Brendan O’Connor’s writing, which is very vivid for me. His daughter was diagnosed as having mild intellectual disability. He said that deprived her of every service she could need suddenly with one sweep, even though it should have been a matter of celebration that she was able to carry on at certain level.

We set all these barriers and I think some of them are being read into reports where they were not meant. There was one especially in the disability area back when I was a young doctor, which obviously is long time ago. It has set up gates and we need a national set of standards that will get rid of those gates, and they need to be monitored.