Ms Jacinta Hastings:

On the submission we made in respect of the Mental Health Act, I will first say that we welcome the review of the Act. It is long overdue. There were a number of recommendations we wanted to support. One of these was submitted by the Psychological Society of Ireland, PSI, and related to the importance of increasing the number of psychological services. The PSI has been very vocal about its concerns about the lack of psychologists and about psychologists in training not being paid and so on. We support that recommendation completely.

From an eating disorder perspective, we want capacity and consent to be considered. This comes back to what we were discussing earlier. I believe it was Deputy Gino Kenny who asked about people having to be made a ward of court. We just wanted to ensure the Act was appropriate to this situation in which people could find themselves. It is very distressing for somebody who might be very ill physically and cognitively. As Ms Parsons said, the family is often pleading for intervention and the clinicians are trying to do the best for their patient. It is a very difficult situation for everybody if there has to be a court process to make a person a ward of court in order to intervene.

What we were looking at in the Act was to make that process as streamlined as possible to ensure there would be no impact on the patient. It is probably looking at trying to review the ward of courtship, as it applies to people with eating disorders. It is quite a complex legal process.