Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy mentioned the budget in the UK, which is interesting. Last week, I met a colleague in Northern Ireland who is a mental health champion. I was surprised to learn that there is no minister for mental health in Northern Ireland. A mental health champion has been appointed there. As part of the shared island initiative whereby the North and South collaborate, I met her last week and she was concerned about the budget available to her going forward.

With regard to our budget, the biggest allocation in the history of the State, €1.14 billion, was provided for mental health services last year compared with €711 million in 2012. I often hear that the mental health budget is 5.1% of the health budget but we must take into account that an extra €4 billion was put into the health budget last year to deal with Covid-19. That has skewed the figures. The previous year, mental health services accounted for 6.3% of the health budget. The 5.1% figure is misleading because it does not include the significant extra funding allocated to the health services for infection control measures.

In addition, the percentage represents only HSE funding for specialist mental health services. It does not capture funding for other parts of the health service that provide mental health services and supports. These include psychotropic medicines funded by the primary care service, liaison mental health services in acute hospitals and some dual diagnosis services in mental health and well-being promotion, which are funded under the addiction side of the budget. To look at this in the round, people experiencing mental ill-health are sometimes treated in acute services rather than a department of psychiatry, which makes it very hard to differentiate.

I take on board the point Deputy Kenny is making and I will push hard in this year's Estimates to get the biggest budget we have ever had for mental health spending.