Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

I acknowledge Deputy Peter Roche and his lived experience. He spoke about the loss of his son. It was powerful advocacy. The more we talk about mental health, the more important it is. The Opposition has a job to do. I listen and take notes. I take on board what is said. I fervently believe that this is a good budget this year, but we have to deliver the budget. There are 300 new posts across mental health. That is significant. I was never able to stand in this House before and say I had 300 new posts.

As soon as the Dáil went into recess this year, and as I do every year, we started meeting with all the various organisations. I met the executive clinical directors, the clinical leads across mental health, and the NGOs that are our partners and we did two weeks of meetings to try to decide what our focus was going to be. I met with the HSE, with the REOs and the various leads across mental health. It is our job then to try to decide a focus.

I have known for the last few years from my constituency office and from talking to colleagues that the crisis out of hours is significant, that is, during the time the services are closed and somebody is in distress and has suicidal ideation. Thankfully, there is a reduction in the numbers, but one suicide is one too many, as far as I am concerned. It is a very difficult situation for families and communities. The Mental Health Commission's report showed that out of hours was very challenging for many people, but also from the perspective of what we know. People were leaving emergency departments, people were feeling they were not supported and people were feeling they could not sit under the bright lights. That is why we had to do more.

I got my final figure of 300 whole-time equivalents at 4.30 p.m. on Monday. For that reason alone there was not a huge amount of detail in the book on Tuesday, given that I have to work with the HSE and the Department of Health to determine exactly where they are going, but I have a broad outline. There will be 40 whole-time equivalents for nine model 4 hospitals and one model 3 hospital, which is the Mercy hospital in Cork because the list of presentations is so high, with 1,200 or 1,300 people presenting. This is what we worked off of. Those are 40 posts to go into the model 4 hospitals initially. I will try to fund the model 3 hospitals in next year's budget. As I could not fund the model 3 hospitals this year, I decided to put in place crisis resolution teams and Solace cafés. I had been in Donegal during the summer and I had been in Kerry. The third one identified by the HSE is Tullamore-Westmeath. That is where the third crisis resolution team is going.

See this speech in context