Ms Ber Grogan:

I am really nervous. This is my first time on this side. Some of the members know me from being a parliamentary assistant in the Houses since 2014 but it is a very different experience this morning.

I just wanted to jump in on this point. Obviously, it was welcome that €1.1 million was made available to the community and voluntary sector to move to online spaces due to Covid. As Dr. Keogh said, it does not replace face-to-face. As part of Mental Health Reform, we are undertaking a project called Brave New Connections and part one of it was launched recently with survey results. That was basically a survey of our members about how they were working in Covid times and how it was for them working online. Some 80% of the respondents said that they work directly with service users while 95% of them expanded their services to online options. Some 70% of them said that they had difficulties but one of the main difficulties was on the service user side - people having access to laptops, tablets, mobile phones. Of those surveyed, 65.5% said that they had technical issues. Again, it is that whole joined-up thinking in terms of providing the funding but will the people who need the supports be able to access it?

At last week's Joint Sub-Committee on Mental Health, Senator Dolan mentioned the libraries and the education and training boards, etc. Again, it is that cross-governmental cross-Department attitude towards access.

On the €10 million Deputy Mark Ward talked about, and it is great to see him healthy and back again after his fight with Covid, Deputy Róisín Shortall recently asked some parliamentary questions on our behalf, trying to find out what initiatives were in place. The Minister said that they were still looking at initiatives and they wanted to see what the priority areas were. That is all great but, as the committee will be aware, it is the community and voluntary sector organisations on the ground which are dealing with this daily and they deal with vulnerable people and people in need to whom you cannot say to wait until the end of quarter 4 2021 and then you will get back to them. That is why multi-annual funding is important. It allows important services to be able to plan, and also contingency plan. We were moving towards e-mental health, but none of us could have expected this.

Sorry, I have probably gone over time but I just wanted to jump in there.