Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to thank the Senator for her interest in mental health. She chairs the sub-committee on mental health and we have had several conversations in the Seanad and otherwise, and I want to thank her for her continued support.

She is quite right about Sharing the Vision, which is the new mental health policy for the next ten years. It is a whole-of-government approach with strong service user and voluntary and community sector representation. As the Senator knows, the national implementation monitoring committee was established in November 2020 and it has already at three times. Various sub-committees will be set up in the next number of months to look specifically at issues in respect of child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and minority groups. For example, we are looking to set up a Travellers group. We are also setting up another committee to look specifically at the challenges that women face in relation to their mental health.

However, the Senator is quite right that we need transparency and accountability. The most important thing with a budget is ensuring that it is spent correctly. I will provide some examples. This week is national eating disorder awareness week. Yesterday, I met with those involved in the national clinical programme, led by Dr. Michelle Clifford, to discuss eating disorders. In the past three years, there was criticism that the budget was not spent sufficiently. Some €3.9 million will be spent this year on specialist eating disorder posts. The three teams that are already in place, and which have not yet been fully populated, will be populated. We are also seeking to set up a further two to three teams this year because currently, not all areas of the country are covered. It is most important that we have that accountability.

The €23 million that I secured in the budget with the support of the Minister means that 153 whole-time equivalent new staff will be put in place. For example, 29 of them will be working with CAMHS to help support the waiting lists. There are currently 2,500 children on the waiting lists. Some 39 new posts will be put in place for adult crisis resolution services and there will be six new whole-time equivalent staff places for the clinical programmes for early intervention.

As I said, I have already met representatives of the HSE on this issue, because the recruitment of stuff must happen in parallel with the Covid pandemic. Last year, for example, many things fell away, because the situation was so new to us that we were learning. As we know now that we have to live with Covid, the most important thing we can do is to ensure that the staff are recruited and that they are trained up quickly. For example, the staff recruited to provide CAMHS supports may already be trained in providing adult mental health supports but they will have to be retrained to provide supports for children and adolescents. It takes two to four months to recruit the staff. Recruitment for the eating disorder teams and for CAMHS is already under way.