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

I thank the Regional Independent Group for tabling the motion. I will cut straight to the chase with some headlines published in the media between June and four days ago. The headlines are: "Children with mental health issues forced to wait up to 18 months for help"; "Mental health budget allocation falls by 1% - PNA"; "More than 2,000 children waiting to access mental health services"; "Tele-psychiatry delivery to plug regional staffing gaps"; "Concerns raised over plan to move HSE child mental health staff"; "HSE report details staff shortages in child mental health teams"; "Inpatient psychiatric care for under-18s exposes health system flaws"; "Psychiatric stays for drug disorders on a par with alcohol admissions"; "Almost half of youth mental health service teams have unfilled posts"; and "Fallen through the cracks and there is no help in sight for them". That is a synopsis of media headlines in that period.

I do not have much time, so I will cut straight to the chase. The Minister of State stated that the motion is broadly in line with the proposals of the Government on mental health. In my experience, nothing has happened on this issue. She said the motion is broadly in line with Government proposals, but then she started criticising what the Regional Group has done and many solutions that have been put in place. I have seen what was done by the previous Government and is being done by this Government. It is about time that the Government took mental health seriously. Deputies come into the Chamber again and again to discuss this issue. It is a talking shop. The people affected by this issue are brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles or aunts. This problem knows no colour, class, creed or religion, and it does hurt. I appeal to the Minister of State to take things seriously. I have been a Member of the Dáil for I do not know how many years. We are speaking about real people. Let us start coming up with a real plan because all we get from the Government is excuse after excuse every time.

In 2018, the first legislation I published was the suicide prevention and training Bill. It was a very simple Bill to require all those working in a public body or the public domain to complete a suicide prevention training course, similar to the requirement for some workers to complete the Safe Pass programme. It was about education. It did not even come before the House because it did not get past the Ceann Comhairle. This Government and the previous one have not taken this issue seriously. I again appeal to the Minister of State to please take this issue seriously because, let us be honest, there is a tsunami of suicides coming down the road. I spoke to members of An Garda Síochána who found the body of a young fella last week near here. He died from suicide.

The figures are another problem. The figures we get are two years old. One must wait for two years to get the figures from the Central Statistics Office and even then we do not know whether they are factual. I echo the call of Deputy Ward for the Government to give us the figures. It does not matter that we are members of the Opposition. We are all here together and we are agreeing on mental health issues. The Government should give all Members the figures and the data to allow us to work together and get things right.

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