Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Minister will disagree, but many commentators would have the view that this is a very political budget. It is a budget designed to secure votes in a general election using borrowed money. It is a budget that is designed to reward higher earners. The recent by-election in Dublin South-West saw an atrociously low turnout, particularly in certain electoral areas. The turnout was as low as 12% in some of the city's most deprived areas. The sad lesson for those communities from this budget is that the Government will no doubt knowingly attack such communities because they simply do not come out and vote against it. Fine Gael and the Labour Party have little fear in targeting the less well off, because their silence at the ballot box is well noted.

Similarly, it affects those who are silent because of stigma in society. They are the people who cannot publicly offer vocal opposition to this Government's targeted attacks on mental health services.

Fianna Fáil is deeply committed to the full implementation of A Vision for Change. However, I am concerned that progress on its implementation has slowed as a consequence of what I described as a crass cut in last year's budget. The programme for Government had a commitment to ring fence €35 million for recruitment of specialist staff but budget 2014 broke that commitment by reducing funding to €20 million. The Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, promised the House that the €15 million taken from the mental health budget in 2014 would be restored in 2015. To cut the budget by 40% last year was a disgrace which reflected poorly in this Government. I do not see any urgency on the part of the Minister of State in addressing the crisis. It is clear that she has betrayed her promise and she has shown a total weakness in defending the ring-fenced budget. It is not good enough that she made a promise last year to restore a ring-fenced commitment only to ignore it yesterday.

With regard to the prior years' budgets and expenditure, there was no significant increase in mental health service expenditure by the HSE during the lifetime of this Government. Despite two years' allocations of €35 million in the budgets for 2012 and 2013, expenditure has been flat because newly appointed staff were put into the system solely to replace those who were leaving. That has resulted in the roll out of A Vision for Change coming to a standstill.

The latest published information on staffing levels is from the end of June 2014. At that time, the HSE had recruited a total of 727 posts into the mental health services out of a total allocation to date of 1,171 posts. However, the net increase in staffing between 2012 and the end of June 2014 was just 80 posts. These staff only appear in the system as other staff leave through natural wastage, retirement or redundancy.

Doctors repeatedly questioned the safety of governance in the service and have accused the Minister of State of ignoring them. Those who criticise her are regularly accused of acting in bad faith. I pleaded with her on many occasions to listen to frontline staff. Given her failure to defend the mental health budget and her incapacity to engage honestly with those working on the front line, I ask her either to up her game to a significant degree or else make way for someone who wants to do the job. It appears that she does not have the heart to follow through on rolling out A Vision for Change, which this party would proudly support.

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