Ms Kate Mitchell:

I thank the Chairman for her comment on the ethnic identifier. I would like to bring the committee's attention to a much broader gap in mental health services in that we currently have no national mental health information system. We have a limited set of key performance indicators, KPI, which the services collect data about, including some information on waiting lists and so on. Not having a full and comprehensive KPI suite and data collection is a fundamental issue with regard to what is happening in our services, especially in our community mental health services where the bulk of need is met. We do not know how many people from ethnic minority communities, including the Traveller community, access our services. We lack KPIs for the quality of service provision and outcomes for people using those services. It is completely unacceptable that we spend approximately €1 billion on mental health service provision each year and we do not have a national mental health information system, including KPIs on ethnic minority groups.