Mr. Tony Canavan:

The report the Senator referred to was a review commissioned by the national director for mental health services. It was commissioned in 2015 and published in September 2017. The reason for the report was there were concerns about the quality and appropriateness of some of the services that were being provided in Roscommon at the time. As the Senator correctly pointed out, a three-person team from outside the jurisdiction came in to look at it. It is fair to say the team reported and called it as they saw it. Unfortunately it did not make for very comfortable reading. They were critical of many aspects of the services being provided in Roscommon at the time. They were particularly critical of the way services were led. It referred specifically to funding that was described as having been returned to central HSE. Some confusion has arisen about the funding. It is just over €17 million for the three-year period from 2012 to 2014. Most of that funding came out of County Galway. Galway and Roscommon were at the time, and to some extent still are, a single administrative unit as far as the mental health services are concerned. When that report referred to those moneys being returned, they were moneys from Galway and Roscommon. It is reasonable to say that most of those moneys went out of the Galway budget. It is also fair to say, because it is said in the report, there were opportunities lost. When that funding was lost, there were opportunities lost to counties Roscommon and Galway to advance the process of implementing A Vision for Change and continuing to improve the services. I agree with it; it is true. It is also important to look at the funding position in the context of what was happening generally in the health services at the time when a lot of services were being curtailed and cut back for cost reasons and in the context of what has happened since. In my opening statement I referred to the fact the funding base across CHO 2, which includes Roscommon, has increased year on year in 2015, 2016 and 2017. We are hopeful it will continue to increase in 2018. It is difficult to find something positive in that report. It was a very critical report of the services overall. I am optimistic about what can come out of it. What can come out of it is we can change the way we deliver our services and the way we make decisions within the service on our priorities. We have established an implementation group around that. It has been working actively on it since September of this year since the document was published. I am very optimistic we will make significant headway as a result of it. This report will have been worth it if it shines a light on things that should not have happened or should not have been done in the way they were and if we take that on board and make the changes that are necessary going forward.