Limerick mental health pilot project a year behind schedule

Community Access Support Team will allow people with mental health emergencies get access to services out of hours

Sinn Féin is now seeking clarity from the government on when the de-escalation mental health project will proceed.

The rollout of a 24/7 mental health pilot project in Limerick will not take place until later this year – a year behind schedule.

Sinn Féin is now seeking clarity from the government on when the de-escalation mental health project will proceed.

Through the project, specialist police officers will deal with incidents involving suspected mental ill-health, either alone or alongside mental health and addiction professionals, such as a psychiatric nurse or social worker. The team will be known as a Community Access Support Team.

Currently, a member of An Garda Síochána can make a decision to take a person believed to be suffering from a mental disorder into custody.

The aim of the project is to ensure people with mental health emergencies can get services outside of normal working hours, instead of being arrested under mental health legislation.

In January 2022, the then Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said in answer to a parliamentary question put down by Sinn Féin spokesman on mental health Mark Ward, that the pilot was scheduled for implementation in Q3/Q4 2022. However, current Minister for Justice Simon Harris told Limerick Sinn Féin TD Maurice Quinlivan in recent days that the project will now be up and running in the last quarter of this year.

Mr Quinlivan said that there is no clarity on when the project will get underway. He said the commencement date has been pushed out on numerous occasions.

He said: “This delay of such a vital project is disappointing, our communities are in need of such crisis de-escalation teams. 

This team will call to a person experiencing a mental health issue in our community. This specially trained team will meet the person, triage them, treat them and refer or bring them to the appropriate service.

He said a pilot that was rolled out in Belfast was run between the hours of 7pm and 7am on a Friday and Saturday in parts of the city for a year, with “excellent results”.

He told the Irish Examiner that there are a number of different voluntary groups in Limerick who currently take it in turns to monitor the city’s bridges because of a high rate of suicides in the city.

Ahead of a decision to run the pilot project in Limerick, Pulse incidents in the local garda division from 2019 and 2020 were analysed. 1,035 incidents were identified as mental health-related that required gardaí to attend. In addition, 136 gardaí responded to a questionnaire, some of whom were involved in multiple incidents across those 1,035 incidents.

Chief Superintendent Derek Smart of the Limerick Garda division said there is still a lot of work to do on setting up the project but said the project will be up and running by the start of the last quarter of this year.

He added: “It is a very valuable exercise.”