Ms Kate Mitchell:

I thank Deputy Murphy and thank him for his very kind comments. I am always very happy to take a visit to Roscommon.

On his first point on children in care, that is EPIC's expertise, and to draw attention more widely to the issue of mental health and the criminal justice system where we are seeing many people with mental health difficulties ending up in the criminal justice system, and more specifically in the prison system because they are not getting the appropriate mental health supports that they require. There is certainly a complete lack of resources in the prison system in providing a range of mental health services and supports and in particular psychological services and supports. One of our asks in our budget campaign for 2020 is that there would be adequate investment in mental health supports among the prison population and also towards developing our specialist forensic mental health services. There are plans to develop a new forensic service, which is due to open in Portrane next year. I draw the attention of the committee to the fact, however, that the European Committee on the Prevention of Torture has previously reported that even with that new facility, it will still not meet the demand. We need to continue to look at that issue.

I will also address the Deputy's point about lagging behind or not fulfilling our own national standards and international obligations.

There are a range of issues related to that as to a lack of implementation of policy. A prime example is our existing national mental health policy: A Vision for Change. There were a number of reasons for that. The group that was tasked with monitoring implementation was disbanded and there was not a costed implementation plan. Going forward, we need to do much better. With the revised policy, it is so important that we have an independent monitoring group, that the plan is costed, time-lined, and there is effective oversight of that.

Another issue is a lack of coherence between our policy and legislation. If one takes our current policy, which promotes the implementation of the recovery ethos in mental health services, on the other side, people do not even have a statutory right to a recovery plan in mental health legislation. That clearly shows that lack of coherence. If we are to be truly effective in improving our services and ensuring that we have a modern recovery-focused mental health system, that coherence must be there between policy and legislation. In that context I would raise the urgent need for reform of the legislation.