Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As are all Members of the House, I am appalled at what we have discovered in County Kerry. The Minister of State is a good person with a good team around her. She is securing a lot of funding for mental health and this needs to happen. Two years ago, all of us on this side of the House signed up to the programme for Government. Something I would like to see the Minister of State push in government is the commitment to have a national director for mental health. In 2016, the previous iteration of the Government pulled it. It needs to be there. We need a man or woman leading on mental health in the Department of Health so it is not the poor relation of physical health and that it is up there at all times with full parity and someone leading on it. I ask the Minister of State to champion this in the Department. If the officials are listening, this should go all the way up to Secretary General. This needs to be listened to. We need someone who always has his or her eyes on mental health to ensure there are no slippages.

I was a primary school teacher prior to my election to Dáil Éireann. Year on year the principal would go around to each classroom in the school to ask whether any child was in need of referral, usually to the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS. In that moment I would have to tell the children to work on the next few pages, scan the classroom and make a decision there and then, knowing what I did about the children and knowing that only three or four could be referred. I and teachers throughout the country are part of the slippage because we allow only a trickle through each and every time. I appeal to the Government I support every week to fund and resource properly the Department so that NEPS and CAMHS have enough therapeutic hours and people so that children do not slip through the net and I do not have to look at John and Mary in my class to choose one over the other and in that moment set their life on an entirely different pathway. It is wrong. Lessons will be learned from this. The Department needs more funding from Government so that we properly put mental health on full parity.

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