Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Thirty-three years ago, in 1984, such was the concern about the mental health services that the central recommendation of the major new document, Planning for the Future, proposed a new model of mental health care. Between 1984 and 2006, there was concern at the slow implementation of the policy and in 2006 - nuair atá an Tánaiste réidh - A Vision for Change was published. This document detailed a comprehensive model of mental health service provision for Ireland for the ensuing ten years, including providing a framework for building and fostering positive mental health across the entire community and providing accessible community based specialist services for people with mental illness. In other words - má tá an Tánaiste in ann éisteacht - it told the Government exactly what to do. A Vision for Change told the Government what to do and how to do it but because its authors knew it would not happen, they made a strong recommendation that an independent monitoring group be set up because the Government, like all institutions, simply cannot be trusted. The implementation body was set up. It sat for two periods, that is, from 2006 to 2009 and from 2009 to 2012, when it monitored and assessed. It comments that the implementation of A Vision for Change was not up to scratch. The implementation body did such a good job in highlighting the slow and inconsistent implementation of the policy document that the body was disbanded.

Separately, year after year the Mental Health Commission has drawn the Government's attention to the failure to implement properly, fully and comprehensively A Vision for Change. In its 2016 report, the commission confirmed that A Vision for Change remained the national mental health policy. The document is to be praised. It highlighted recovery, person-centred approaches, partnership, user and family involvement and the delivery of services in a multidisciplinary community basis. A Vision for Change ran until January 2016. The Mental Health Commission has pointed out that while the vision of the document is excellent, the implementation was certainly not up to par. More importantly, the commission reiterated the need for an independent monitoring of A Vision for Change. Five years have passed without any independent monitoring mechanism. We are one year and three months after the promised review of the existing A Vision for Change. I have no idea what the difficulties are in this regard. I have raised it with the Tánaiste and I have raised it in the Dáil ten times but we still do not have the promised review or the implementation body, which is absolutely essential.

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