Tom Neville (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The HSE told me it would provide me with these figures but it was unable to give me them immediately because of the way the systems are built and bolted together. That is a financial back end system. When a business or, as in this case, the Government is administering money to an organisation, it wants to know where this money is spent. I asked for top-line figures, not nitty-gritty detail. Representatives of all the community health organisations, CHOs, were present at the November meeting and they provided the committee with a breakdown of their figures to show what they were doing. I asked how much money was spent on new services and how much was spent on existing services. I would like those figures.

On the recruitment process, I accept there are worldwide shortages of medical staff. Let us park the issue of salary and look at the process. The specific process for medical recruitment is cumbersome and there is no contingency planning being done. When staff are approaching retirement or when they hand in their notice, this information should be quickly put into the system and become part of the process. We have asked for an end-to-end process for recruitment and for the dotted lines of stakeholders to be joined up. The process needs to be streamlined, particularly if we are competing globally. We need to make the process lean, from A to Z.

I welcome some of the initiatives. Multi-annual budgeting is a good development. The budget for 2019 will increase by €55 million against a benchmark of €35 million. The €55 million increase is welcome, as is the recruitment of 114 assistant psychologists and the additional hours in the school system. I would like to see more cross-departmental initiatives, particularly around early intervention and building organically into early intervention and prevention strategies for mental health services.

I know there is a proposal to move to a seven-day service and we want to build into that a 24-hour service as quickly as possible. I have been speaking to the Minister of State, Deputy Daly, on that issue as well. I thank the Minister for the establishment of this committee which will shine a light on the future of mental health care.