Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge this important motion brought forward by my colleague, Deputy Ward. We all know how Covid has taken its toll on mental health. Speaking to parents and young people, every one of them says they are in varying degrees of stress and anxiousness. Children have been missing their sports for more than a year. That void has had a huge impact on their mental health and placed increased stress on their siblings and parents. People who otherwise would have had good mental health are struggling and those who were previously struggling are in distress.

I heard William Cummings, who does fantastic work with the Be Aware Be Safe, BABS, listening service say recently: "It's only when we listen we truly understand, when we understand we can begin to help."

We need significant investment in non-medical support for talk therapy to reduce the numbers of those with poor mental health from becoming increasingly distressed. Sinn Féin would invest €10 million in a talk therapy fund, which would create 128,000 sessions with accredited counsellors or therapists in the private system for urgent care on referral from a GP. We would ensure that before individuals are in distress they are able to talk to a professional who engages with them. This fund and service would be really important and help to prevent individuals from entering emergency services. This emergency talk therapy fund must be a priority.

In line with this, there needs to be universal counselling within primary care services so that counselling services are not barred from individuals because they just missed out on qualifying for a medical card. Sending an individual who is suicidal to an emergency department has clearly not worked because we do not have the required services. We need to open private hospital care so that pressure is released within the public health system. I recently read that emergency departments are like ground zero for mental health patients.

We have one of the lowest proportions of hospital beds for psychiatric care in the developed world and the numbers drop each year. With every bed that is lost, the threshold to admit someone to hospital must rise. Patients need to be increasingly sicker before they can be admitted to hospital. This is 2021. We have had Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil working together for almost five years and a Fine Gael-led Government before that. They cannot wash their hands of the mental health emergency we have. Mental health is not a nine-to-five issue; it is a 24-7 issue and needs to be resourced to reflect this.

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