Dr. Aideen Brides:

The chronic disease programme that came into general practice over the past year to 18 months looks at diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, ischemic heart disease or stroke, and cerebrovascular accidents. It is a structured care programme that offers two visits a year to patients who have these illnesses. They come to the GP, have their bloods done and are seen by the GP after that. It has been resourced and is working unbelievably well. The hope is it will move many of those diseases out of crowded outpatient facilities into general practice.

If there were a similar system for mental health, it would work really well, but without funding it cannot happen. The Deputy mentioned figures. I did the maths last night, and Australia’s budget for mental health is exactly double that of Ireland. There are many solutions but funding is needed. As GPs, we say that if someone has a physical problem, he or she will take treatment, and the same should be true of mental health. The Government, however, pays much lip service to mental health provisions, but very little action is ever taken. If that is happening at Government level, we will find it very difficult to get patients to accept the same changes.