Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)

That is a most creative piece of presentation to cover up a lack of spending and an abandonment of the recommendations in A Vision for Change. Was the Minister of State consulted over the decision of the HSE to reallocate €23 million from 2006 and 2007 to something other than what the Government and the Minister designated it for? The Minister stated that up to early December, €51 million had been allocated in 2006 and 2007 and A Vision for Change was being implemented. We now discover that €23 million of that was hived off. When did the Minister of State sanction this change? A Vision for Change explicitly recommended non-capital investment of an additional €25 million each year for seven years.

Does the Minister of State agree that the decision to provide no extra funding for 2008 is an abandonment of that recommendation, of the Government's expressed policy of implementing all the recommendations and, in effect, of the mental health service? A Vision for Change explicitly recommended that resources, both capital and revenue, in the mental health service must be retained by it.

In January, the Irish Psychiatric Association identified 17 incidents of asset stripping of our Victorian asylums and lands over the past two years. Will the Minister of State explain why he sanctioned this as it is against expressed Government policy since 1984?

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