Ms Orla Keane:

I am also in charge of the mental health tribunal’s team in the Mental Health Commission. We deal with these issues all the time. The first point is that 32% of involuntary admissions used the emergency provision - we call it the section 12 provision - last year. This shows that the statistics are going in the wrong direction. They should have been decreasing. We would have expected them to be the exception, not the rule. The process begins where gardaí have a reasonable belief that somebody is suffering from a mental disorder. The criterion relating to identifying mental disorder under the Mental Health Act is very complex. even though we have asked for it, we have no visibility of the exact training gardaí get in that regard. That is not a criticism of the Garda, which engaged with us very well in July. We raised questions with the force. Unfortunately, we have not heard back. I am sure we will, but we have not heard back from them at this stage. Then the person is taken into custody. One of the problems is that there is no specific period set down in the Act regarding how long the person should be in custody. That is the first problem.

Then the person is seen by a GP. In 2020, 616 applications went through via section 12 to make people voluntarily detained. The Garda very openly stated that it initiated 5,700 or so applications under section 12. There is a gap in that regard. What happened to the other 5,100 cases? There is a lack of clarity regarding the pathway and what is happening. We hope there will be some good news on that front. The expert group on the review of the Mental Health Act stated that all applications under section 9 should be made by authorised officers and suggested that section 12 should be left there. The commission recommended that gardaí should not be allowed to make applications under sections 9 or 12. The Department of Health has taken that on board. What is now being proposed is that gardaí could take a person into custody but an authorised officer would have to come and make an assessment.

We have also stated that there needs to be a fixed period for which a person can be kept in custody. If anybody on the committee would like to pursue the issue, we would like the period for the person to be in custody to be reduced to the minimum. A person detained for being drunk and disorderly or because he or she is suspected of drink-driving is only taken into custody for three hours. For a person who is detained on foot of a mental health issue, there is no set period as regards how long he or she can be in custody. The period currently being suggested is 12 or 24 hours. We are saying that it needs to be an awful lot less.

There has been progress. Gardaí would welcome that they would have a role but that they would not make the involuntary applications because they would accept, from a human rights point of view, that the person who should be making those assessments should be someone with a health or healthcare qualification. The matter should be dealt with in the same way as that relating to a person with any other healthcare issue. I hope that assists the Deputy.