Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My question is on the pilot mental health peer support workers initiative. I have asked about it a number of times. I asked the head of mental health services in the Wexford and Waterford region about it and she failed to answer my question. A month later she said funding for the trial of the initiative simply went to Carlow, Kilkenny and south Tipperary and that it will eventually be rolled out in Wexford. Of all the areas in the country Wexford probably needs it more than most. We have no emergency mental health services outside 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. The programme is about empowering people to make decisions about how their care proceeds. Surely autonomy is a human rights issue and the bedrock of self-respect, and it is something that is not available to people who are challenged in this area in Wexford at present, where we probably have the worst mental health services in Ireland.

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