Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the delegates for attending. I will be as brief as I can. Mental Health Ireland raised the issue of access. I was speaking to Deputy Crowe about this and I said that if somebody needs a newspaper, he or she knows they have to go to the newsagent. Newsagents are readily available. If one wants a drink, one goes to the pub. Gaining access to mental health services seems to be the biggest problem. We have many organisations going in the same direction but they are splintered. We and the delegates have all been very successful with regard to the mental health awareness campaigns. They are working but we do not have a mental health access awareness programme. If one's leg is broken, one knows one has to go to hospital and one knows the service one has to access.

In the past two years, anxiety has been a major issue across the board. I will not elaborate on this. Suffice it to say much anxiety has to do with isolation, social media and spending five or six hours in the bedroom. It is definitely leading to anxiety.

How do all the delegates feel about age-appropriate mental well-being in schools? I refer to children in primary school and even younger. Two of the speakers mentioned coping skills. We are not giving our young people the coping skills to deal with what comes along in life.

My next point is on the charities and voluntary groups that are supporting all the initiatives. The delegates referred to 6%, 10%, the Sláintecare report, the WHO, and the funding of 12% or 12.5%, which I totally agree with even though I worked on the Sláintecare report. Do the delegates believe many of the mental health services are being run on the cheap because of the funding? We know there is a lack of funding.

My final point is on recruitment, on which I am going to be very blunt. Could the delegates answer simply, with a "Yes" or "No", the question of whether we need the unions, all the sectors and the Government to agree the staff are not being paid and that if they cannot be paid, they cannot be recruited. If the staff cannot be recruited, there will be a forever-toxic system with a revolving door that will never be fixed.