Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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I reiterate that. Ms Curtis is right that I have approached the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, on numerous occasions, officially and unofficially, and even asked her during the last break or so-called recess, whenever it was, in her capacity as a civilian to go in and look at the place. Unfortunately, that request was declined. Ms Curtis is right about how important this is.

Of all the stories, one particular story stood to me, namely, that of a lovely man who had the ability to go to the shop on his own and get his bottles of water and a few apples. Ms Curtis knows who I am talking about. He could get on a bus and travel somewhere and come back. I spoke to him outside the courthouse at the top of the town, where there is a little seated area, and he said to me, "I thought this was my forever home and I was going to die here." That is a fact, and that was a grown man crying on a Saturday morning. I meet him most Saturday mornings. I do not think management knows the detrimental effect this is having on the individuals. They are not stupid. They have issues but they are not getting respect.

You should treat the person, not the problem. That is the issue here, and people outside of this committee should take that on board. I appeal to the HSE, especially the new board of the HSE for Cork and Kerry, to come down to the area. Ms Curtis is right that everybody should sit down at the table. As I have said before, we all make mistakes, but we should be brave enough to put up our hands. We do not mistakes; mistakes make us who we are. If you can be a better person for that, it should not be about money or means. It should be about the needs of people. That is the biggest problem. We have lost that vision. If people were really serious about this, they would grow the cojones to stand up to bullying.

I will be very blunt and brief on this. I remember meeting a top child psychologist at a meeting of the Committee on the Future of Mental Health Care. When he came in here he was leaving a post in some area very similar to where the witnesses are now. This was a number of years ago. The first question I asked that man was if he was threatened by senior management that day because he had come here as a witness, and his response was "Yes". That will tell you how bad it is.