Ms Tahereh Fardin Tabrizi:

Yes, please. Yes, Mr. Reilly and I share a lot. As a migrant woman, when I first came to Ireland I was surprised to see how much I shared with the Traveller community, for example.

The point I wish to raise is having the diversity within the workforce. About half our healthcare workers are migrants, but that is not the case specifically in mental health. That poses a huge challenge because the vocabulary of mental health is very different from one migrant to another. Sometimes clients will come to us and say, "My heart is burning." That means the person is not mentally and physically doing well. As regards the diversity within the team, we are fortunate in Doras to have a few languages within our organisation in order that when individuals come to us distressed, we are able to communicate with them in their own languages and in a culturally adaptive way.

Deputy Burke referred to new PPS cards being issued, which is great. It shows we have more diverse communities in Ireland. However, we are also seeing with the Afghan admission programme, for example, that many families are starting to come into Ireland now but their PPS cards have been delayed massively. That puts a toll on their mental health because they do not speak English and cannot register for English classes without PPS cards, so it just goes on and on. The mental health state of the host families is affected as well because they cannot possibly carry the financial burden or the responsibility. They are interpreters and breadwinners for the family and have to do literally everything, and that needs to be noted.

On the point of having a diverse workforce, there is the possibility of making qualification conversion easier.

We have people who are qualified as psychotherapists or psychologists but they face a challenge because they are not able to work in Ireland even though they can speak the language.