Professor Matthew Sadlier:

In general with regard to community mental health, the Bill we have been discussing today tends to deal with those who are most unwell. Most mental health care in Ireland happens at general practice and primary care level. Enhancing primary care services and general practice access to counselling services, psychology and multidisciplinary teams could potentially reduce the number of people who escalate their problems to this level. Working with voluntary groups is also beneficial. One of the gaps we have in the Irish service is very much creative, for want of a better word. When I was working in Blanchardstown the best programme we ever had was in conjunction with the FAI. I will stand over saying this and it has been published. There was a kick-start training programme which took seven service users at a time. It was weekly programme. It has been published and I will not go into its full details. The improvement it made was beyond anything I ever saw in those patients from medication or psychological therapy. It was done through normalising behaviour and bringing them to a non-mental health environment where they were treated as people and not patients. This is one of the areas where we really fall down. We should be trying to enhance this work with other groups, whether it is the GAA, the IRFU and non-sporting bodies such as music. This would really help.