Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I will reply briefly to Deputy Carey's other two questions. The team of 40 stakeholder agencies that put "Connecting for Life" together has formed an implementation group for the strategy. As there is a multi-agency or multi-stakeholder approach to "Connecting for Life" there is an oversight process whereby the agencies meet and each agency accounts for its stewardship of the actions it signed up to. In the mid-west it is a three-year plan and in late 2018 there will be a full mid-plan review for the public to see. I said at the time of the plan's publication that we would have to be held to account by it - we could not just produce a lovely report on the day and the process was over. It was just the start.

On the question about the budget, the Deputy is quite right. Certainly in my time as a health service manager there has been a reasonable increase in the budget over the last couple of years. It has been very welcome. In terms of what that has helped us to do, I can give the headlines. I worked in the health service when there was one CAMHS consultant. I now have six teams, albeit they are at various stages of development. We have refurbished the acute unit for psychiatry in Limerick to a very high standard and we have been able to build eight high observation beds there. I have approval and development funding for approximately 24 posts to open those but I am faced with an immense challenge both in the industrial relations arena in securing agreement and in the recruitment arena in securing the people. I believe the mental health service is fundamentally different from what it was, although it has huge challenges. One of the hallmarks of it for me was in 2016 when we closed the last bed in the last of our old psychiatric hospitals.