Joan Freeman (Independent)
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The next batch of questions will be from me, Senator Murnane O'Connor and Deputy Michael Harty. I will start. I will address Mr. Saunders and then Ms Brennan. If there are questions that Mr. Saunders is not able to answer, I would be obliged if he could provide those answers at a later stage so that we can include them in the report.

Who does the Mental Health Commission report to? Who funds the Mental Health Commission? If it is the Department of Health, surely there is a conflict of interest? How can it tell the Department of Health that it is not doing a good job if it is paying the commission to do that? I am a little concerned about that. Will Mr. Saunders clarify that? He said the commission was established in 2002. As mentioned earlier by Deputy Brassil, the commission has written thousands of pages of reports and, 16 years on, we are still seeing the same problem. Do you have any power at all? When I say "you", I do not mean Mr. Saunders but the Mental Health Commission. Let us be very clear about that. Does the Mental Health Commission have any power at all? With all the reports and what it is finding, nothing is changing. When Mr. Saunders talks about how he thinks the commission should have the right to access external services, to measure, identify and investigate them, that would worry me a little. Since the commission has very little impact on mental health services, surely if it starts to focus the spotlight on external services, it will be taken away from the HSE? That worries me because we as a committee are trying to make the HSE accountable. I would like Mr. Saunders to comment on that.

My next questions are for Ms Brennan. I want a real, honest, basic answer to this question. What is she going to do now that the services are going to be removed or stopped? If they are returned, the chances are that it could be in about a year's time. To recruit a psychiatrist in the south-east area would take at least a year. What is Ms Brennan going to do now? She mentioned the four year waiting list for her child. What was the waiting list for? Was it for initial assessment?