Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the question. Year-on-year funding for mental health services increased by €74 million from €1.221 billion announced in budget 2023 to almost €1.3 billion in 2024, with a strong focus on investing in youth mental health. Improving access to mental health services remains a commitment for me and my Department. To this end, funding for mental health has increased by 25% during the lifetime of the Government.

As the Deputy will be aware, we have a new HSE office for youth mental health which will improve planning for and the delivery of CAMHS and wider services in 2024 in line with recent audits and reports, such as those by Dr. Maskey and the Mental Health Commission. I sought these reports because I thought it was important to have real-time data that were not available to us previously because they were not collated.

Examples of service initiatives for mental health that will be funded under budget 2024 include additional staffing of CAMHS teams to improve access to services and reduce waiting lists. I am on the record as stating that I was disappointed about the allocation for new developments next year. Working with the HSE and the Department, I decided to prioritise youth mental health so there will be 76 posts. We will also expand the multidisciplinary CAMHS hub teams to complement traditional service models and further develop specialist mental health teams providing early intervention in psychosis and eating disorders. A lot of recruitment is under way for 2023 and some of the posts funded in 2023 will only come on stream in 2024. In many instances, it takes up to 12 months to recruit someone. Those posts are safe and they will come in early next year. Initiatives also include a new youth mental health app to provide interactive supports and dynamic signposting and the development of a central referral mechanism, the no wrong door approach, which I know Sinn Féin welcomes. As the Deputy will be aware, the HSE service plan is currently being worked out so to give specific figures is difficult at the moment.

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