Ms Susan Clyne:

The issue is that, currently, there are postcode lotteries. The legislation must ensure a service will be provided equitably to all citizens regardless of what areas of the country they live in. It will be up to the Mental Health Commission to ensure two outcomes. The staffing levels must be appropriate and the funding allocated to that service must be sufficient to meet the requirements of that catchment area. In the recent agreement the IMO reached with the Department of Health, for example, there is specific funding for areas of deprivation. It is recognised, therefore, that within a catchment area, there are some areas where additional funding will be required to deal with them. The lines get very blurred in respect of funding. We talk about millions of euro being spent on health but, when we bring it down to individual catchment areas or to the fact that there are mental health teams throughout the HSE, they are not fully staffed teams. I keep on having to come back to this. In many cases, they are notional. They allow us to tick a box and say something has been done but they do not deliver an holistic, comprehensive service to the patient.