Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I too compliment Deputy Browne and the rest of the committee, including Senator Freeman, on their work and the report. This Oireachtas has been criticised a lot for its inaction and inactivity, and the brand of new politics is a handy kicking bag for some, but one thing we can say with certainty is that it has brought a focus on mental health like no other before it. I am sorry Deputy Neville has left the Chamber because his dad was a lonely voice on mental health issues for so many years when he was here. So many people have brought that focus to the matter. Deputy Harty's remarks were quite succinct in that they painted the whole picture of the matter and illustrated that this is a primary care issue. The challenges facing our primary care system will not go away. There was a response to Deputy Wallace's contribution on managing the deficiencies in resources through medication because there is no choice in many cases. Deputy Lahart commented earlier on wellness. The Deputy, who has experience in this area, is very passionate about wellness and the broader picture of mental health.

I made a proposal here a number of weeks ago that if we are to change our attitudes as a country to mental health, we must start at primary school level. Many Deputies have spoken about the resource issues, and Deputy Browne has championed the need for 24-7 care and more community care. I often feel that some of the walls that used to surround mental health treatment institutions in the 1950s and 1960s still exist in our minds today in the way we as communities respond to those with mental health issues. Yes, tomorrow night will be amazing. Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world will be out for Darkness into Light, and the community response around the country to mental health issues is local and often led by people working in the services. However, we still struggle with people - colleagues, friends and family - who have mental health issues, and many do not feel equipped to deal with them.

We need to start changing attitudes gradually and to start bringing in, to go back to Deputy Lahart's point, a well-being programme at primary school level. One of the most effective things I have seen in changing this country's attitudes to the environment is the green flag programme. Kids at schools are coming to their less aware parents as champions of the environment. Regarding energy awareness, water awareness, recycling and other things we would not necessarily have done, children are coming home and being the parent in the way we respect the environment because they are learning it and living it at school. Similarly, we need to introduce into schools some kind of mental health and wellness awareness programme in order that children from the earliest age take it as normal to discuss their mental health, just as, if they fell in the playground, they would discuss a graze on a knee or, if they broke a limb, God forbid, come into school with the arm or leg in a cast and everyone would sign it in celebration. We need to do the same with mental health. We need to take into account all the factors that contribute to mental health, including diet and awareness of and participation in sport and athletics, not just academic programmes at school. We need to assure schoolchildren that there will be support and a community response if they encounter mental health issues in the same way that the meitheal of community goes around. As with people who suffer physical illness or some kind of tragedy or trauma within the family, that meitheal should be available and should be a natural response to a mental health issue or challenge. We must start changing the attitude at that generation and taking down these walls that are still in many people's minds, even though the physical walls may be gone, not necessarily out of ignorance, but just out of a fear of the unknown, a fear that people might make things worse by getting involved or fear of an invasion of the privacy we still associate with and attach to mental health conditions.

This is why this report and the work of Deputy Browne, the rest of the committee and all the spokespeople on mental health - I see Deputy Buckley here - are so important. I refer to the awareness of mental health issues being introduced, and awareness of this report, into the mental health budget in particular. Having worked on and negotiated two budgets now, the mystery and the walls that surround the mental health budget are Byzantine. I pay tribute to Deputy Browne and the mental health alliance, who went after the mental health budget like dogs to bones to try to get through those walls in order that next year we will have for the first time a beginning, a proper rolling budget specifically for mental health.

However, there must be accountability for that budget. We must see if services improve on the ground. Users and their families need to see that that money is being used on the ground and not poured into administration or overheads and other costs. It must deliver services and make a change to outcomes. The work that has gone on in this report must change delivery on the ground, and other work will have to change attitudes. Mental health's days of being the Cinderella of the health service need to come to an end. Cinderella needs to go to the ball and marry the prince. If we keep treating the matter as an AOB item in terms of budget and policy, it will continue to lag behind resources, services and community attitudes.

Let this report therefore signify that mental health is now serious. I would like to see the Ceann Comhairle drive to ensure that under Standing Orders a mental health committee will be established forever and that that awareness will forever be there as a legacy of this Oireachtas. Bit by bit, every local authority should establish a mental health committee. There were mental health committees in local authorities decades ago to deliver the service, but now we need to put that back at local authority level, not just at HSE regional level because HSE regions have become completely unaccountable to elected members. Would it not be a good thing that after next year's local elections every local authority established a local mental health committee in its area to bring an awareness to the delivery of services and an awareness of mental health in every local authority area? It is something different and would bring home the message.

Deputy Browne, Senator Freeman and all the other members of the committee - I think Deputy Buckley is on the committee as well - hid down in the basement and did a job many people probably wished someone else was doing. They took it on and they have delivered. It is now up to this Oireachtas and the Government to deliver on the promise of the report and to start actually changing the outcomes in and, most importantly, the attitudes to mental health in this country.

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