Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 16 May 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Future of Mental Health Care

Restructuring of Mental Health Services: HSE

1:30 pm

Mr. Jim Ryan:

We received €35 million full year funding, of which €15 million is available in year one in order to start the initiatives. That would equate to €35 million full year spending in the following year. It takes time to recruit and develop the services. That has been our process over the past few years, where a certain amount is given in year one, or whatever, and the full year is €35 million. In that way we know what we can spend on new developments and services.

Deputy Neville spoke about the difference between investing in existing infrastructure and new infrastructure. If there is a CAMHS team of 13 clinical people, and there are eight in order to bring that up, that is a service improvement as distinct from a new service. That is one of the ways we are trying to say service enhancement is to improve the service we already have and new development is putting in a new team. Sometimes we might put in a team of eight or six to begin the process. Some of that has to do with infrastructure and there are other reasons.