Tim O'Malley (Limerick East, Progressive Democrats)

I suggest to the Deputy that other people have views, as well as the consultants.

The past year has been one of great change within mental health in Ireland with the launch of A Vision for Change, the report of the expert group on mental health policy in January 2006, the full implementation of the Mental Health Act 2001 from 1 November 2006, growing service capacity and additional investment. I assure the Deputy that the Government is committed to the full implementation of A Vision for Change and has accepted the report as the basis for the future development of our mental health services.

Implementation of the individual recommendations of A Vision for Change is a matter primarily for the Health Service Executive. In July 2006, the HSE established an implementation group to ensure that mental health services develop in a synchronised and consistent manner across the country and to guide and resource service managers and clinicians in making the recommendations in A Vision for Change a reality.

Some of the work carried out to date includes informing all relevant stakeholders, including staff, voluntary agencies, service user representatives and media of the recommendations in the report; developing additional capacity in child and adolescent services to reduce the dependency on adult services for this client group; commencing the establishment of 18 additional multi-disciplinary adult psychiatric teams; preparing for eight additional child and adolescent multi-disciplinary psychiatry teams; developing a population based resource allocation model; processing the full economic value of psychiatric hospital buildings and lands for reinvestment in the mental health services; training for 5,300 staff employed in the service; establishing the interim national service users executive, which I launched last week together with a mental health resource pack for use in primary care; and establishing the project team to develop the new Central Mental Hospital.

In March 2006, I appointed an independent monitoring group to monitor progress on the implementation of the recommendations of A Vision for Change. The group will monitor and assess progress on the implementation of all the recommendations, including those which fall under the responsibility of the Health Service Executive, Departments and other relevant agencies. The group is to submit its first annual report in mid-2007.

The chairpersons of the implementation group and the monitoring group will meet in the near future. Following that meeting, the Health Service Executive will publish a progress report and will outline the proposed implementation programme over the ten-year life of A Vision for Change. Both these groups will play an important role in ensuring that the recommendations are implemented in a co-ordinated and timely manner.

The Government has almost trebled expenditure on mental health from €326 million in 1997 to €835 million in 2006. We have already allocated a total of €51 million additional funding for 2006 and 2007 to implement A Vision for Change. This is one third of the total funding estimated by the expert group to implement fully the mental health strategy over seven years.

A Vision for Change outlines a comprehensive model for mental health service provision for Ireland. It describes a framework for building and fostering positive mental health across the entire community and for providing accessible, community-based, specialist services for people with mental illness. This Government is committed to the further development of our mental health services throughout the country and to ensuring they will continue to be improved and enhanced in the coming years.

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