Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing two and half minutes with Deputy McNamara.

I am on record as saying that the Minister of State is taking a hands-on approach. I welcome that, but that hands-on approach must be within a context of recognition of what the Minister of State has inherited and where we are with mental health. We have the Mental Health Reform submission, which I am sure the Minister of State is aware of and which was already referred to, we have the Ombudsman commission's report in relation to it and we have, quite extraordinarily, many articles in the national and daily newspapers telling us the situation in relation to mental health. The article that left an impression on me was by a therapist who has been working for a number of years, who said, "We must confront painful truth: we are facing into a mental health crisis." and, "I have never known my work [and myself to be] so ineffective." I will not name her. She was in the national newspapers. That was also carried in an article by Mr. Patrick Freyne.

Let me go to what matters. We have any amount of documents. In 1984, in a different life, I was very familiar with it. I foolishly was hopeful, when the Planning for the Future report was published and I worked as a psychologist, that we were moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, it was never implemented. That was followed by A Vision for Change. That was very badly partly implemented. We did not need another document. Then we had an update of literature and then, finally, we got Sharing the Vision. What we have really got is a constant change of language and no implementation.

The Ombudsman's report is frightening in relation to mental health. The Ombudsman points out that we have the fourth highest suicide rate for teenagers in the EU-OECD region, 2,300 children waiting for an appointment to CAMHS, and all of the other figures that have been mentioned.

I have one minute left. I do not wish to quote figures. They are at pandemic levels but what is awfully important here is the independent monitoring commission. The Minister of State has made progress and I have taken the trouble of reading the minutes. First, I congratulate the Minister of State on pushing to set up that independent body. I do not wish to be negative but I have to say I worry about its independence. I worry about the gender breakdown. I worry that the health executive is very much represented on it. How will it function as an independent monitoring commission? Also, the chair of the Mental Health Commission, which has done tremendous work for mental health when it visits, is on it. There are serious questions here about independence and about the ability of that body to monitor implementation of the third document we have got, Sharing the Vision. I wish I could go on but I will not.

See this speech in context