Dr. Eilion?ir Flynn:

I thank the Senator. To start with the task force, as Ms Joyce has already alluded to, we have a slightly different position from the IPRT on the task force recommendations. There are some we think have much potential. An example is the recommendation research be commissioned to establish the extent of the numbers of persons with mental health difficulties appearing before the courts and the broader needs of that cohort with respect to accommodation and so on. We completely support that and think it is absolutely necessary. There is another recommendation around the creation of assertive outreach teams to make mental health care and housing supports available to people in distress and especially to ensure people to do not enter the criminal justice system in the first place. As we have been talking about, we completely support that as well, so long as it with the person's informed consent where the decision of whether they access the outreach services offered to them or not is concerned.

As for our concerns about our human rights obligations and how they relate to the findings and recommendations of the high-level task force, the international evidence and the UN committee's position on this are very clear that systems of diversion based on impairment and diagnoses related to mental health are themselves inherently problematic in terms of human rights obligations under the UNCRPD. A fundamental transformation of the criminal justice system is certainly welcome in order to ensure many people caught up in it who should not be there are not there. However, separating people out on the basis of a diagnosis is inherently discriminatory on the basis of disability according to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and we really need to acknowledge that. It is certainly an issue when it comes to the high-level task force findings.

Another issue we are concerned about, again based on our obligations under the UNCRPD, is the recommendation from the task force on consideration of community treatment orders. This is a practice that has been heavily criticised by the UN committee as imposing a kind of deprivation of liberty in the community on people. We have talked about community support as being vital for recovery. Part and parcel of that fundamentally must be that the person wants to engage in that. Otherwise it is not going to have the same effect. It is not going to be valuable or meaningful for the person; it is just another form of coercion that is being imposed on them. Again, while we understand the impetus to try to keep as many people out of the criminal justice as possible, we think those ideas are quite problematic in the context of Ireland's human rights obligations. We therefore query some of those recommendations and would like to see greater scrutiny of the recommendations in light of Ireland's obligations under the UNCRPD.