Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I want to ask the Minister about the Covid-19 crisis and the question of mental health. A recent article in The Irish Timesentitled "Ireland facing a 'tsunami' of mental health problems", cited international evidence to show that the pandemic has served to intensify the mental health crisis in other countries. In the United States, for example, 45% of people with suicidal thoughts recently had explicitly linked them to Covid-19. Maynooth university and the centre for global health at Trinity College Dublin recently released the first wave of the Irish Covid-19 psychological study. The survey found 41% of respondents reporting feelings of loneliness, 23% with clinically meaningful levels of depression, 20% with clinically meaningful levels of anxiety and 18% with clinically meaningful levels of post-traumatic stress disorder. A recent article in The Irish Newsestimated that Ireland was among the top 20 countries in the world most likely to experience a surge in mental health cases as a result of the pandemic.

All of this comes on top of circumstances in which mental health services are already creaking at the joints from pressure from demand in the context of underfunding. For example, in the child and adult mental health service, CAMHS, there are 2,200 on the waiting list according to the last figures we have, which are from 2019. In my area, Cork–Kerry, there are 162 who have been waiting for the services for a year or even more.

Are our mental health services fit for purpose? I do not mean in any way to question the work of the staff, both the paid staff and volunteers, who do heroic work, but even heroic work does not necessarily cut it when a mere 6% of the public health budget goes towards mental health services. This contrasts with the expenditure in many European countries, which spend at least double that or more. As a result, there is considerable over-reliance on the voluntary and charity sector, a sector that is uniquely exposed to this crisis. An example is the way in which fundraising has been affected. We saw what happened with Darkness into Light. Charities are expecting to lose income in the order of up to 40% this year, and 54% of charities are concerned they may be unable to continue providing services for more than six months. What we have is a genuine double whammy. On the one hand, there are underfunded services that were already creaking at the seams before Covid and that are now hit with a funding crisis, and on the other hand there is what was described in the article, namely, a tsunami of mental health problems. This adds up to a really difficult situation that cries out for urgent action by the State.

I would argue two points, in particular, the first being that there is a need for an immediate doubling of the State's mental health expenditure as a first step. Second, there is a need to establish an Irish national health service that fully integrates the voluntary and charitable sectors.

Will the Minister comment on the mental health crisis we are facing as we move out of lockdown? Second, what is his position on the two issues I have raised, namely, the need for radical increases in expenditure and the need for a public health service to cover mental health?

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