Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 6 December 2022

Joint Committee On Health

People Detained in Secure Forensic Mental Health Facilities: Discussion

Ms Molly Joyce:

I will jump in with a general point on the data and then pass over to the others to move into the expertise of the CMH. This is a significant issue across the entire criminal justice sector so I was not so surprised. For example, we do not have any up-to-date figures on the rate of disability within prisons or the rate of mental illness within prisons. The IPRT will often cite figures but some of the figures that we cite as to the levels are from a study carried out by Professor Harry Kennedy back in 2005. We are still using that study. There are some more recent figures that we use.