Ms Kate Mitchell:

It is clear that Ireland is currently out of compliance with the UNCRPD in that the Mental Health Act 2001 is not in line with the convention or the European Convention on Human Rights. The Government acknowledged this in its roadmap for ratification of the convention. This is evident in several parts of the Mental Health Act, for example, voluntary patients do not have basic rights to information on their estimated length of stay in hospital. People who are inpatients detained under the Mental Health Act 2001 do not have a legal right to an advance directive by which they can, when they are well, set out their wishes and preferences for their treatment. The advance directive then comes into effect when they become unwell. People who are detained under the Mental Health Act 2001 are the only group of individuals who are excluded from that right to a legally binding advanced directive. We are also out of compliance in not having individual care planning on an statutory footing and the lack of statutory rights around advocacy services and supports. Many provisions in the Mental Health Act 2001 require reform and must be updated urgently to ensure we are in compliance with international human rights standards, including the UNCRPD.

On A Vision for Change, it is clear that many aspects of the policy have not been implemented or implemented to full effect. This was evident in Mental Health Reform's most recent national consultation of people who use mental health services. For example, for 13 years, the national mental health policy has stated that all individuals accessing mental health services would have an individual care recovery plan. More than two thirds of respondents to the survey reported that they were not aware of having a written care recovery plan. The national mental health policy explicitly states that people should have access to key working but many of the people using the services report that they do not have access to that kind of support. A similar issue arises with regard to service users being listened to or involved in decisions on medication. There is a significant gap between what is in the policy and what is happening in practice. The revised mental health policy offers a very positive opportunity to address some of those issues. We need to ensure implementation of the revised policy and one way to achieve that is to cost a timelined action plan to ensure there are robust monitoring review mechanisms in order that we do much better this time.