Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I accept that the setting up of that task force was very important to the three parties in government as part of the programme for Government. I am delighted to hear him say that the Ministers for Justice and Health have met. I do not want to be blaming the people in the Prison Service because they are not trained for this type of work. The task force is great. The Minister of State may not know the answer to this but when is it due to report back? If he does not have that answer today he might come back to me with it. In the meantime, we must ensure that there are psychiatrists, psychologists and people to deal with this issue within the Prison Service to deal with any mental health patient who ends up in prison. The divide needs to be addressed quite clearly in order that a person in this situation can go directly to a psychiatric hospital and not to a prison. It is not the place for those people and we see what happens, which shows that those people are in a vulnerable position if they end up in prison.