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

I thank the Minister of State for his answer. I will revert to what I mentioned earlier about the problems with staff shortages and forward planning. It is not a personal attack on anybody but if somebody is going out on maternity leave, surely there is forward notice or somebody will cop on that if somebody is expecting to go on leave, which they are totally entitled to, something should be put in place where the HSE can plan ahead, so it can know that someone is due to go on maternity leave on a certain date and should be able to recruit and fill that gap temporarily.

March is five months away. October, November, December, January, February and March are very bad months here so I am not optimistic about the forward planning, as we call it. Vacancies for a psychologist, social worker and occupational therapy is a huge gap in services. How have people been coping with this? It goes back to the morale of the people on the front line. I am black and blue from coming in here and to committees and asking Ministers why the powers that be and the HSE cannot plan ahead. We have said it repeatedly. We will be facing a major issue in the next couple of years. We will possibly have 500 people in mental health services retiring and nobody is planning for it because the system works on a basis of having to wait first for the individual to retire, then it goes into a 12 month cycle and the crisis gets larger. I want to highlight it. It is not a personal attack on the Minister of State and I appreciate the answers he gave me. I am disappointed that we do not have forward planning. We have another emergency in Dublin with people who will be severely affected, not just with mental health difficulties and weather, but we are being told the best the Department can do is say that it will see them again in March.

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