Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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The Minister, Deputy Harris, and the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, are very welcome. One of this committee's key recommendations is to seek an increase in the percentage budget allocation for mental health services. Substantial improvement in funding have been made, as can be seen from an allocation of €737 million in 2013 compared with an allocation of €912 million in 2018, which represents a 28% increase in funding over the course of those six years. Notwithstanding that, the spend on mental health services is only 6% of the overall health budget. We have heard that from the various organisations that have made presentations before this committee. The lack of funding for services is a significant barrier to people accessing services. What does the Minister intend to do to increase funding for mental health services? Representatives of Mental Health Reform, who appeared before the committee a few weeks ago, strongly advocated for an increase in the mental health budget. I strongly believe we need to do that. Will the Minister outline the efforts he is making to increase the mental health budget in the upcoming budget and over the course of the next few years?

One barrier to the rolling out of an efficient mental health service is the lack of a proper, efficient information technology, IT, infrastructure within the Department of Health with a director of services and managers to monitor the spend on services, manage referrals and chase up issues. Will the Minister outline the ongoing work to deliver a proper IT system? Until we have that we will not get to grips with where money is being spent and not being spent in terms of dealing with the various issues.

I was particularly taken with a presentation by Dr. Harry Barry to the committee a few weeks ago on talk therapy and people's access to it. He put forward a model on improving access to psychological therapy that has been rolled out in England that he proposed could be used as a template in Ireland. It emanated from that engagement that we have a total reliance on psychiatric services to get access to services. A person needs to be able to engage with such services at the very outset, as well as the end of the process. It would benefit people if they had better access to talk therapy and to cognitive behavioural therapy, CBT, in particular. I know people who are attending day hospitals in my constituency in County Clare and they were not referred for CBT. Eventually they got access to that therapy by another means and, as a result, they have transformed their lives. There is a shortcoming in that respect. The Minister needs to home in on the lack of speedy access to talk therapy and I ask him to indicate what he intends to do about it.

I was also quite taken with a presentation made to the committee a few weeks ago on the issue of the recruitment and retention of staff. We were told there were 24 different stages to recruiting an individual to a particular post. That process is very unwieldy. It just does not work. It means that when a post becomes available, it may not be filled for many years. What does the Minister intend to reduce the period within which posts can be filled? He referred in his opening statement to new and innovative approaches to recruiting staff. Will he expand on what he is doing in that regard?