James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In those circumstances I will ask my questions as quickly as possible but they will probably not have much context. My focus is on mental health and the issues of disability coming out of Covid-19. Covid-19 is now our new reality and will be for the foreseeable future. We are already focused on the immediate Covid-19 curve and flattening it, but there is another curve that is rising, and that is mental ill health. This curve too needs to be flattened. The fallout of this pandemic will be experienced long after Covid-19 has passed. It will bring a secondary crisis in the months and the years to follow. The mental health of the general public is suffering from unprecedented social anxiety due to health, economic and family strains. Even before Covid-19 there was an epidemic of isolation and loneliness in Ireland. Isolation is now Government policy, for understandable reasons, but that does not lessen its impact. I know many people suffering from the impacts of isolation. I think too of our healthcare workers who are having to make some very tough decisions and may suffer moral injury.

Will the Minister establish a mental health task force to flatten the mental health curve and prepare for the inevitable mental health fallout of Covid-19, which will last much longer after the virus itself? Will he put in place very specific mental health supports for our healthcare workers, who may suffer serious mental and moral injury as a result of decisions that now have to be made? Will he put in place specific bereavement supports for those who have lost loved ones during Covid-19 and cannot grieve in the normal Irish traditional way? Will he ensure necessary funding supports to allow people with disabilities who are currently in residential settings, inappropriate settings, who want to live independently but have not been facilitated by the Government to date, to do so?

See this speech in context