Professor Eilion?ir Flynn:

We agree in terms of the length of the review. Six months is a long time to go without a review in this kind of setting. Even to shorten the period for a review would not address some of the substantive and structural concerns that are leading to people spending long periods in the CMH overall. One of the findings of our research was that people could not progress as they would wish along the pathway that would eventually lead to release because the resources were not there to support them to spend short periods in the community supervised or to have temporary leave because the supports were not there outside of the CMH for them to do that or there were not sufficient resources in the CMH to support people to do those things that they needed to do. People who had tried really hard and had followed all the steps in a pathway, and had done everything they could do, were still not able to access things like leave because the support was no there on the other side. I certainly cannot say how much it costs to conduct a review. That information was not part of the research. I can say what certainly is needed is more resourcing or, indeed, a redistribution of existing resourcing to ensure that there is greater opportunity for people currently in the system to leave it. People need practical support in order to access community and access support in the community to ensure that they do not return to the CMH again. Those are the pieces that are missing. Even if we speed up the review process we still need to address those structural concerns because otherwise people are going to be reviewed more frequently but with the same outcome because they cannot progress to any other option. I am sure my colleague, Ms Ní Chaoimh, has more to say about the review process.