Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I am another one of those who was late. I was at another meeting. I offer my apologies.

I was listening to some of the proceedings before I came in. What struck me, to follow on from what Senator Clonan said, is that we are great at theory and legislation in this country. However, the concerns I have are primarily about the practicalities of implementing the various aspects of this legislation. I was struck by the presentation by the Garda. In my experience as a public representative and seven years as a TD, I have been called to incidents involving families who have basically been dealing with gardaí, and that is where the initial presentation emerged. There are one or two things in the Garda presentation on which I wish to seek clarity. The CAST model being run in Limerick seems to be well thought of, and Senator Byrne spoke about its merits. In relation to authorised officers, it was stated:

We further contend that only allowing authorised officers to make an application could add to the already adversarial and structured process and potentially cause significant delays to a person receiving treatment.

Are our guests asking that An Garda Síochána would still maintain a role in terms of being authorised officers?

The second point comes back to what Ms Keane just spoke about in relation to resourcing and staffing this model going forward. I can envisage a situation where we have people waiting in accident and emergency departments or in Garda stations, potentially, for an authorised officer to come. There are 186 people carrying out this role in the model that is in place. Until we beef that up to 500 or whatever the target is, I am afraid we might have situations where people are blocked in the system in some way. What are the concerns around that?