We're an events based lobby group, so as you can see we're running an event here in Cork.
We run about 3-4 events every year based around community, community activity and all community
both mad and not coming together in a space of kind of comfort and freedom.
I think everything we do we're a little bit quirky, a little bit different and we try
and do it by not talking about it.
We don't do pamphlets or leaflets or speeches, it's all about just coming together, spending
time with each other and like I said a wider community so that's both mad and not.
And then the serious business is the lobbying, so we do a huge amount of work in policy and
legislative change in relation to the Mental Health Act 2001 which is under review at
the moment and proposed capacity legislation coming through the Department of Justice.
We're the two key pieces of legislation at the moment so we work with the media and
with politics to try and ensure positive change.
So it's great to be here, I can mad pride.
So we find it very difficult to get serious state funding and a lot of the other voluntary
agencies don't like us because we're the guys all the time needling in the corner, we're
the guys all the time asking the awkward questions, raising the awkward points but we feel it's
our obligation to do it because nobody else is doing it so kind of getting to the table
was a very difficult thing, it took us three and a half odd years to kind of get a seat
at the table and what I mean by that I suppose is to get inside the door of politics and
the media.
Like my father, late father John, who started the organisation, he was just I think November
brought on to a new committee on mental health by Kathleen Lynch and we'd only had one meeting
of it and unfortunately he's passed away.
So now we're back outside again, so you know we're going to keep plugging away at that,
we don't get a lot of people kind of see a lot of what we do either online or offline
or through the media and think we're huge but we're actually not, there's only three
of us, there was four and now there's three so we're this tiny little group who kind of
punch above our waif so we'd like to be that bit bigger but again if it means staying small,
being awkward and getting things done we'll do that too.
Hold thy desperate hand at our man, will thy slay thyself and thy lady too that lives
in thee by doing them not hate upon thyself.
What rowdy man thy jury yet is alive whom thou so daily loves, dare that thou lucky?
And we would always say that you, everyone has an element of madness to them, everyone
has a bad day or a bad week and some people's stress and depression goes longer than others
and all we're saying is come together and see that there's nothing wrong or different
with any one of us, we're all humans so just to spend time, to enjoy fun, music laughter
and take that away which would take a bit of goodness and a bit of a positive view in
your heart and for us that's the main thing.
