Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I do not want to bandy around terms in a sensitive area like mental health. It seems to me that moving patients from an open unit where they are happy in a community to a closed secure unit - at Christmas, of all times - essentially because of staffing shortages is not the best treatment possible for patients. The question of who is responsible for that is a separate one. Ms Louise Bayliss was right to blow the whistle on it. Although I do not know the truth of the matter, I am absolutely convinced that Ms Bayliss is telling the truth in every single detail of her account. Therefore, questions have to be asked about why she was removed from the wards the day after she blew the whistle on what was happening at St. Brendan's Hospital. I absolutely accept what the Minister of State said about the independence of the advocacy network. I suggest it needs to have an independent source of funding. We can argue about the difference between direct pressure and indirect or implicit pressure, but I suggest that if one's funding comes from the HSE, one will feel compromised in one's ability to advocate on behalf of patients if one thinks it might annoy the HSE. That has to be addressed.

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