Dr. Miriam Kennedy:

We are not in industrial relations, IR, but there has been feedback from colleagues and people who have emigrated. They have said that when it went to the new €105,000 and €111,000 rate, which people said is grade eight or principal officer, they actually left the country. They were very keen on research and service development but said it was from the point of view of mortgages, loans, moving their family around and the worry. Somebody else mentioned a salary of €185,000. I have many colleagues who have said that somewhere between the two is good, as long as it is equal across the board. It is the disparity for some of our colleagues. We used to have a session for research time or supervision time and we used to be able to get cover to keep up our CPD and to go to two-day or four-day conferences during the year. We are not covered for that now. There are all of those shifts within the system. It is always hard to say but certainly in the case of psychiatry, where most people are in public jobs, even those who are in private practice, we do not have the same drive from the salary point of view, although I might be shot by colleagues for saying that. If it is a good commensurate salary that is fine. There is not a huge amount of private practice, nor is that the driver. Our feedback from people, when asked why they stayed in it, is that the driver seems to be that people say it still floats their boat even though it is difficult. We care.

I will respond to Senator Devine because she mentioned something very important, which is trans-institutionalisation. Having worked in forensic psychiatry as well, not all the beds will be filled by the new ones. It probably comes back to what makes us psychiatrists. I have never met a psychiatrist who does not love a person with schizophrenia. It is just that one understands what it is to be different and to experience the way they experience life and the difficulty. There is real trans-institutionalisation. What would float our boat is to be able to have step-down, rehabilitation and so forth within the system, and to bring them back. It is not just the medium secure but also people who have been devastated by the effects of illness early in their lives. The college is hugely committed to the issue of what we can do to make those links and provide those services. Forensic psychiatry will not be the total thing. It is also to do with not just homelessness but picking them up earlier. I have worked at a time when there were changes in contract and changes in the public service where suddenly everything was centralised and I could not replace two community psychiatric nurses, CPNs. I was told that the 40 young men with schizophrenia could come to outpatients. I said: "They will be sick in six months. If they cannot get up and get their breakfast, what does it matter to have an appointment there?". That joined-up thinking is awfully important. We are very passionate about the quality of life. What makes us exhausted is if one does not feel one is involved in that type of improvement or one is leaving people out on the street.