Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am going to speak for two minutes and then leave two minutes for the Minister to respond. We all saw the generous support of the Irish public for Pieta House last weekend, with the big fundraiser on "The Late Late Show". Like many others in the House, I supported that charity last week. I was concerned to discover, however, that Pieta House had introduced redundancies for clinical workers prior to that fundraiser.

At a time when people's mental health is being adversely affected by the pandemic, what is the Government doing to help Pieta House retain these clinical support workers and how will the Government fill the void in mental health support created by these redundancies? The HSE funds Pieta House to the tune of €2 million per year. What, if any, discussions has the Minister's Department had with Pieta House regarding future provision of the service?

There is a bigger issue, however. If people trusted the Government to provide a comprehensive mental health service to begin with, there would be no need for Pieta House or other charities to plug the gaps. Being so dependent on charities to provide services that the State should be providing is a failure of this Government. Covid-19, as has already been mentioned, has seen an upsurge in people looking to avail of mental health supports and the longer this goes on, the bigger will be the demand for these services. Time, unfortunately, does not permit me to debate written responses I received from the Minister during the week on issues I had raised previously in this House. Will the Minister, therefore, support the reconvening of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Future of Mental Health Care? Will he also support a special sitting of the Dáil in respect of mental health? We need a change in how mental health services have been provided in recent years.

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