Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important question about mental health, especially men's mental health. He is absolutely right. Unfortunately, in 2022 we had 410 deaths by suicide and 80% of them were men. We have been looking at this very closely. We encourage people like the Headsup programme. We also encourage men to attend men's sheds and to be able to speak openly about their mental health challenges. One thing in the programme for Government is that I allocated €2 million specifically for counselling supports for men under the CIPC programme. Anybody with a doctor only card is not eligible to receive these counselling supports free of charge. What it means is that we are starting off with men specifically, because that is the area we are trying to reach. I am working closely with the Department on rolling out these counselling supports specifically for men. I commend the Deputy on his work on men's mental health.

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