Ms Siobh?n McArdle:

As the Senator is aware, Sharing the Vision is the national mental health strategy. We are well into the implementation phase of that. The allocation of funding for mental health this year has seen a year-on-year increase. We are now at an investment of €1.3 billion. That is across all our core programmes as well as our specialist services. The Senator's query on cohesion and integration with other parts of the service is critical because we have had investment in dual diagnosis teams. We have seen a roll-out of our dual diagnosis specialist service for people with a presentation of addiction issues as well as mental health issues. There is also a focus on investing in those teams for our children, particularly teenagers and young adults in the Dublin area. It is important that specialist programme on dual diagnosis will be rolled out through the life of the strategy nationally. The demands are different and vary in different parts of the country. The HSE representatives might speak to some of the creativity involved in doing hub and spoke models, where there may be a specialist team providing outreach and support to CAMHS teams or community mental health teams.

The other piece of integration in terms of specialist programmes relates to mental health for those with an intellectual disability. This involves more specialist teams for people who experience mental health difficulties and have a learning difficulty. Those teams are specialist but work in that middle space between mental health services and our learning disability services to support families and individuals who experience poor mental health, and the people around them, in a more specialised and tailored way. Again, as part of the overall strategy, there is a commitment to ensuring that investment and continuation of the improvement in our community mental health services, and layering the more specialist programmes on that.

In addition, we have specialist programmes on eating disorders. We know that frequently involves an interaction between our acute hospital service and our community mental health service. We are increasingly seeing over time, with the development of those community teams, a greater proportion of people successfully receiving and achieving treatment in the community. That then creates less demand on our acute hospital service.

I will pass over to Dr. Ní Bhriain, who may have further details.