Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

With regard to oral health, I assume Deputy Kelleher was asking about children with intellectual disabilities, which is the only group that needs to be sedated for oral health. I do not know about the case to which he refers. Perhaps we will find out about it afterwards and revert to the Deputy. With the development of the new oral health policy, there is less need for full anaesthetic for people with an intellectual disability. Mild sedation can be applied, usually by trained nurses in the local dental surgery. We will inquire about the case, but I am not certain, so I will not say anything more.

With regard to Deputy Ó Caoláin's question about the additional €15 million in the mental health budget, about which Deputy Kelleher also indicated, I did not go looking for the additional €15 million this year. I am normally open and frank about these things. If we did not get the money, who is paying the salaries of more than 1,000 people who are employed with the additional development money? It surprises me that people do not recognise the fact that people are being paid every month. Clearly, the money has to come from somewhere. During the year, we discovered in one of my regular meetings with the executive clinical directors, ECDs - the consultants who lead the service - that the moratorium and cutback on the numbers employed meant the administrative staff had been depleted. Rather than using part of the €35 million received in 2013, we used some of it for administrative staff. I consider that to be as important and crucial to mental health services, so that when people are seen as outpatients or inpatients the proper notification is in front of the treating clinicians. That was not in the original application. I consistently check this point and seek various charts.

At the end of August, approximately 99% of the 416 approved posts for 2012 - that is, 411 - have been filled. Of the 477 approved posts in 2013, 75%, or 352, have been filled and the remainder of the vacant posts are at various stages of recruitment, with some difficulty in identifying outstanding candidates. This is for geographical or qualification reasons which I will explain further later.

A total of 85% of people recruited for the combined two-year posts have taken up duty. Approximately €5 million of the €20 million in development funding for the additional 250 posts is targeted to be spent in this quarter of 2014, with €15 million meeting various broader service pressures for this year. This will go to fund the additional 2014 posts in full in 2015. Funding for the National Office of Suicide Prevention has more than doubled, from €4 million in 2011 to €8.8 million in 2014.

Funding is included in the HSE’s capital plan to provide for planned infrastructural development of the national forensic mental health service, for instance. The application, as the Minister rightly said in his opening statement, is in place. I am sure there will be some objections, but from what I hear there will be very few. The issue is construction more so than the institution itself. We will have to study this seriously, because within that new building we will put in place a new unit for people with intellectual disability, which we have not had before now.