Vol. 512 No. 7
154 Mr. Neville asked the Minister for Health and Children the reason the report of the inspector of mental hospitals for the year ending 31 December 1998 which was submitted to his Department in March 1999 was not published until November 1999. [27195/99]
The report of the inspector of mental hospitals for 1998 was submitted to me by the inspector on 15 October 1999 and published on 5 November 1999. Considerable misunderstanding has been caused by statements that the draft report was submitted to my Department in March 1999 and I would like to take this opportunity to clarify this issue.
The report of the inspector of mental hospitals consists of a summary of the reports of each inspection of mental health services carried out during the preceding year. An initial draft of each inspection report is received by the mental health services division of my Department and, in line with a protocol developed in consultation with the inspectorate, each draft is sent to the chief executive officer of the relevant service provider, health board, voluntary hospital, private psychiatric hospital, for verification of factual content. When all the responses have been received, they are considered by the inspectorate and any necessary amendments are made to the report. When the reports of the individual inspections have been completed, they are summarised to produce the final report. The inspector also writes an introductory chapter for the report.
The inspector's report also contains statistical data on the mental health services. Statistical questionnaires are sent out to each service provider, health boards, voluntary hospitals, private psychiatric hospitals, by my Department towards the end of each year. Each service fills out the relevant questionnaire and returns it to the Department. This can often take some time as quite an amount of detailed statistical data is sought.
