Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 23 May 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Future of Mental Health Care

Mental Health Services in Prisons and Detention Centres: Discussion

1:40 pm

Professor Harry Kennedy:

If I can. We have 11 consultant forensic psychiatrists and in the new hospital we plan to transition to having many more than that. Of those 11, 2.5 are providing prison in-reach full-time. All of us provide in-reach services to different prisons in varying proportions of part of our weeks. We need to increase that greatly as well. Today, there are 28 people on the waiting list in prison. Others are on other parts of the waiting list. The committee has been briefed on that.