Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I share the Deputy's concern. I will also be talking with some of the mental health clinicians, teachers, school principals and parents. They have seen a worrying spike in eating disorders among younger people during the pandemic, especially among younger women and girls. It is really concerning. With the numbers in front of us, we have a significant increase in mental health funding. I will come to how eating disorders is dealt within that.

The total increase in mental health is €83.2 million. There is €23 million in new measures and €15 million in Covid-19 programmes. Something that is below the radar, which some people would see as a technical adjustment but which is hugely important in getting the mental health services running, is the €45.2 million also being allocated to existing level of service, pay rate funding and technical adjustments. Essentially, the HSE has maintained a position for the past few years, of which the committee will be aware, where it said that it could not provide the new services because it was not getting a sufficient increase in its base funding for the existing services, which is covered under existing level of service, ELS. This year we have put a huge amount of funding into ELS to cover the increases required for this year and the historical deficit. This year we really need to see the health service providers stepping up to add all the new services.

There are a few things happening specifically around the child and adolescent mental health service, CAMHS. New CAMHS staff have been funded. We have an increase of 10% on last year in the CAMHS community mental health budget nationally, which is important. This is for assessment and treatment. There are three new CAMHS tele-hubs nationally, which goes back to the conversation on e-health. There will be a new high-dependency unit in CAMHS in Galway, which will commence construction later this year, which is very welcome. There is also additional bed capacity being put in place.

Specific to progressing the specialist mental health programmes, four that are getting particular attention are dual diagnosis. There is a real problem with dual diagnosis whereby a mental health service states it cannot treat a person because he or she is in addiction, and addiction services state that they cannot treat the person because he or she has mental health issues. We are cracking that nut. Quite a lot of people who have fallen into the dual diagnosis are being failed.

I fully agree with the Deputy that early intervention in psychosis, eating disorders and mental health intellectual disability is a big focus. It has become a real problem during the pandemic. We are funding to scale up in staff, early assessment, treatment, beds and community healthcare provision.