Mr. Jim Ryan:

Part of the challenge is that we are not sure. We have seen research on what happened in previous traumatic situations. Covid-19, considering that it will be with us for a considerable period of time, poses a greater challenge. I am a member of the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership, IIMHL. Our international colleagues have done a good deal of work on the medium-term effects. The concern, as the Deputy said, is that initially there is a buzz about people coming together and then there is a flatter period. One of the things we need to ensure is that from the point of view of primary care and universal support - I spoke earlier about our tiered level supports - we do not say that everybody who is feeling down has a mental illness.

That is not the case. We need to preserve our secondary and tertiary care services for those who need them most.

From the point of view of primary care, we have attempted to use technology to deliver additional counselling services and sessions online. This has been done through platforms like SilverCloud Health, MyMind, spunout.ie, turn2me.ie and any number of other organisations that we have funded. This is about giving people the tools to deal with an issue which we hope will be finite but which we now recognise will be with us for a while. We want to ensure two things, namely, we want to provide upfront services while making sure that the services required for those with a longer-term mental illness are not adversely affected.