Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Due to my past as a person who was in business for 17 years, I was, and still am, really good at figures. Last year the budget for mental health was €1.076 billion. This year it is €1.149 billion, an increase of €73 million because of clearing the historical deficit, which will give me 350 whole-time equivalents. Last year, the extra €23 million I secured only gave me 153 whole-time equivalents, so the amount of money I have this year will be significant because there are challenges, as we all know, with recruitment and retention. There is no doubt about that. We are working very hard to populate all those clinical programmes and get those staff in place.

You can pick out different areas in budgets but one area I am really pleased about is the new model of care for older people which will be advanced. We are all familiar with the integrated care programme for older persons, ICPOP, but they never include a psychiatry of later life element, so I will be able to roll out three pilots next year in relation to that.

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