Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I extend my welcome to the four witnesses we have from the HSE. I am sure the witnesses will accept that part of our role in this committee is to scrutinise accountability in mental health services with respect to delivery. This refers to funding, staffing and implementation. I know we will deal with implementation next week. Funding also relates to staffing and, in considering this, we will look at the gaps in mental health services. This is about us doing our work in making recommendations. It is regrettable that the budget could not be broken down into specialties like CAMHS, as has been mentioned. Mr. Mulvany mentioned that this might be something we could get. It is not just about being accountable to us as members of a committee but being accountable to the people we represent. There have been various crises involving mental health, so if we could stand over levels of investment in different areas, it might be easier to ascertain the gaps and what we need to do to be able to help with them.

I note the €35 million in additional funding committed to mental health that was held back by the Department of Health in 2016. Was that funding released? It is important to know if money is being held back by the Department, when services could have good use for it. My colleague, Deputy Martin, has referred to the link with education, and as part of this a report was produced by a committee on mental health in schools. We made 20 recommendations, one of which was that there should be collaboration between the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health issues and the Minister for Education and Skills. I would like to know Mr. Mulvany's views on that. There is another link with education.

We have had some questions on the planned recruitment and if young people when they are leaving school could look at areas that are available. That needs to be worked on with the Department of Education and Skills. I ask the witnesses for their comments on that aspect.

CHO7 has been allocated €87.5 million. I appreciate that the allocations to the different CHOs are historical. Society has changed so much in recent years and we need to be able to stand over it in a far better way because some of the areas have different types of challenges that change from time to time. Even though that might seem like a significant amount of money for Kildare and Wicklow, I am conscious that towards the end of the old health board system that area had the lowest spend on mental health per person. I do not know whether the figure tallies with that.