Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 29 September 2022

Public Accounts Committee

2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 38 - Health
Health Service Executive - Financial Statements 2021

9:30 am

Mr. Maurice Farnan:

Yes. We have invested €9.1 million in the 13 Jigsaw sites and Jigsaw offered 23,750 appointments for young people in 2020. Additionally, we have been investing in a range of digital mental health services which research tells us are more attractive to younger people. Included in that are online cognitive behavioural therapy, CBT, services that are being delivered in conjunction with an Irish company and 80% of these referrals come from GPs. That service has been evaluated successfully. We are in the procurement process to role that out.

I will mention two other services. MyMind provides online counselling. The Text 50808 service is a crisis intervention service for younger people. Again, research is clear that that modality is attractive to a younger cohort of service users in crisis.