Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Lahart for that and all the work he does on mental health. It was fantastic that he met with the ambassador from Australia. We have much to learn from other countries.

I look forward to live meetings. You cannot beat the cut and thrust of an Oireachtas committee room. I spent a lot of time in those rooms during the years when I was Chair of the Joint Committee on Business, Enterprise and Innovation. You cannot beat that.

Much of today's focus has been on lived experience, which is so important. I was delighted to invite Dr. Harry Barry to our meeting. Taking the political hat off, the points he made were fantastic. One of which I will share with the committee. He spoke intently about the difference between mental health, mental illness and emotional distress and how they have all become jumbled up in the past 18 months. It struck me that he was very concerned about people reconnecting and their resocialisation. Many people stayed at home for the past 16 to 18 months. They have not been out and about. For some, that will be an added trauma when coming back to the workplace. It will be an added trauma just coming back into society. Dr. Barry felt the system is not geared towards emotional distress. It is geared towards mental health illness and mental health supports. The low impact challenges facing people is something that we can certainly look at. He spoke about the three different types of anxiety people suffer from, namely, acute anxiety, which includes panic attacks, social anxiety, which I spoke about, and general anxiety, which includes getting up in the morning and getting on with the day. Dr. Barry spoke about the challenges different people, young and old, deal with every day of the week. I was struck by his contribution about emotional distress, and the fact that we have an awful lot to learn about long Covid and the emotional distress associated with it.

I thank the Deputy. I look forward to coming before the committee again whenever members ask me, to discuss further work they are doing. I believe the more we learn from one and other, the more supports we can initiate for people who need them.