HSE mental health centres must focus on key areas of compliance or risk being de-registered, the Mental Health Commission has warned.

Its annual report has said public services must improve in four key areas or face a "real risk of being removed from the register of approved mental health centres."

The report shows there has been an overall and continued improvement in compliance across all services, when comparing pre and post-COVID pandemic figures.

However, four regulations had compliance rates lower than 70%: premises, risk management, individual care planning and staffing.

The report shows just 27% of centres were compliant with the regulation on premises - a further drop from 2021 when 33% of centres were compliant.

And just over 30% of centres were compliant with the regulation for individual care planning.

'We've done a lot of work'

John Farrelly, Chief Executive of the Mental Health Commission, said there has been some good progress.

"Today's report show's that in terms of human rights, we've done a lot of work in our mental health services," he said.

"Seclusion rates are down, restraints are down, over-capacity is down in units.

"However it does show, as per last year, that the HSE services are not of the same standard and quality as many of the independent services".

Mr Farrelly said shortcomings have to be addressed.

“Notwithstanding that providers should be generally applauded for the significant work they have undertaken in recent years to improve overall compliance, we can now undeniably say that there are four key areas... where standards are simply unacceptable, as they were in 2021 and in many years prior to that," he said.

"Services, particularly in the public system, must drill down and focus on these areas over the coming months.

"We would expect that the HSE concentrate first on the centres that have low standards in care planning and premises.

"The overriding message from today's report is that centres who have performed poorly in these areas need to comply with these regulations or face the real prospect of not being re-registered.

"Being compliant with these and other regulations – which, lest we forget, are the minimum standards – is the very least that people living in the areas served by these centres deserve," he added.

The MHC said it has written to the HSE seeking an updated action plan to address the issues raised.