Professor Jim Lucey:

There is the law of unforeseen consequences. In many respects, the main provider of mental health services in this country, the HSE, celebrated its alacrity and dexterity in introducing online services within mental health as being one of the examples for the future healthcare delivery in the country – telehealth and so on. The celebrated examples were within mental health. However, we have an issue now of re-establishing what might be a hybrid but certainly needs to be a nuanced and flexible service meeting the real needs of individuals. Many people are finding it difficult to get one to one or get access and may be offered a service online that was appropriate or necessitated by Covid but is no longer so. As I said, we do not regulate those outpatient services and we do not have a standard around them.

There is research on the experience. The experience of online can be good but a standard set for one service over the other is not there. The unforeseen consequences that Dr. Hillery talked about are very real for individuals who, on the one hand, appear to benefit for a time but, as circumstances change, the service has not moved with those.