Mr. John Farrelly:

As for the Mental Health Commission, I cannot overstate the movement to community mental health services. I do not mean residential services in the community. That will happen. Part of the Act will be regulating the residential centres in the community. The phase after that, where there will be proper community services such that a young man or women in any town in Cork or someone who needs a service can walk out his or her door and get that in the community. If such people become unwell, they will not need to be hospitalised because we will have the services. They are about now. St. Patrick's did them very well during Covid-19. Full mental health services were provided to people in their own home, with the option of admission. We have a long way to go.

In terms of advocacy, it does not always have to be in the legislation because the regulations can become more discreet and prescribe more specifically some of the things that would be required of service providers. It may be that a person would have access to advocacy as required. There are many ways outside of the Act to do this. In regard to a protocol, that is a political issue. We support anything that would help to improve our mental health services.

I wish to emphasise the point that this is ambitious legislation. If this legislation is enacted, we will be changing the mental health services in Ireland for good. We will get to regulate these community services. We will be able to look at them and assist everyone to make sure that the services are up to scratch. The first thing we will do is work with everyone to produce standards and documents to know what a service should look like. There is a great deal in this legislation