Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Browne on bringing forward this Bill. I am glad to have an opportunity to speak more on mental health in the Dáil. As I have said many times, the mental health services have a responsibility to address and to treat mental ill health. These are two of the biggest issues I come across on a daily basis in my work as a public representative.

Everything in our lives impacts on our relative state of mental health. This includes our work, education, family, social lives and the climate we live in culturally, politically and environmentally. Our mental health is also tied to our physical health and vice versa. Prolonged illness in either regard has an impact on the other. The parity of mental and physical health is an undeniable fact because of this link and there is potential for either pillar of our health to have a devastating effect on our quality of life should illness befall us and go untreated or unresolved. This does not necessarily affect the policy of this Government. Political decisions are far too often not based on fact, rational decision making or even what is effective but on compromise in order to serve an ideological goal.

Mental health sits not in parity with physical health but quite far below it in Government policy. It is often seen as a soft touch where Government divestment from public service provision could be pursued and important functions of State institutions could be outsourced to community and voluntary bodies, undermining service provision and the rights of workers and patients in turn. The problem is not one of law, although we support this Bill. It is one of policy and political will. Mental health services are seen by the political class that has run this country for decades as an expensive and complicated burden, much like housing. That does not change with a paragraph of stand-alone legislation but it can change with real policy and real political will to deliver world-class public services as a function of a State that sees its role as one of caring and providing for its citizens. This would be a good point to remember when Fianna Fáil discusses its relationship with Fine Gael as an enabler to a Government that has completely failed to address the problems in our mental health services, which although complicated by their enduring presence are essentially the day-to-day tasks of running a service.

There are difficulties with recruitment but they would be far less damaging to our service if they had not been allowed to deepen by heaping the brunt of austerity on people working in them over many years. This affected nurses, in particular, but all levels of the mental health service have had to work in chaotic, dysfunctional and sometimes dangerous conditions, overworked and too often underpaid. That problem was allowed to develop without intervention for many years and now with services at breaking point and national scandals like the crisis in CAMHS, it is a Government problem of its own making, although it is not insurmountable. We cannot play the waiting game while lives are at stake, hoping unrealistically that things will get better. No medical professional would ever advise a patient to ignore a problem and hope it goes away, and nor should any Government.

Speaking on First Stage, Deputy James Browne, who has given his support to this Government stated:

It sets out a pathway for addressing staff shortages and other resourcing issues affecting our mental health services. It is imperative that all organisations within our health system need parity obligations and this Bill will help bring Ireland into line with international standards on the provision of mental health care.

This Bill does not provide a pathway to anything other than speaking time in the Dáil. There is a pathway for addressing the problems he correctly outlines as being seriously damaging to our services. That pathway is the work of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Future of Mental Healthcare and the recommendations of its interim report on which the Deputy, I and others have worked on. Fianna Fáil should be using its position to hold this Government to account on these issues and ensuring speedy implementation of this pathway. This Bill, however well-meaning, will not do that.

We need a more positive and realistic approach and I appeal to all parties to stop the talking and head-nodding. Now is the time to invest in our mental health services. We should remember that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael did not support our proposals for €37.5 million in additional funding in 2016 or the roll-out of 24/7 services. The Minister of State mentioned a while ago an additional 1,800 new posts but the latest report I have is that 1,700 staff could be lost in the next five years due to retirement. That will have a negative effect again. I will finish by calling on the Minister of State to commit to maintaining the mental health committee beyond the final publication of its report and indefinitely to work in parallel to the health committee. That would be a real step towards parity. I know Deputy Browne supports this and I ask that he bring the full weight of his party on the Government in seeing this become a reality.

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