Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the opportunity to address this matter with the Minister of State. I acknowledge he is concerned about suicide and self-harm. He takes a personal interest in these matters. They are all too common across the State. Statistics show that, last year alone, there was an average of one suicide per day in the State. This means one life too many was lost per day.

Save Our Sons and Daughters, SOSAD, Ireland, which has six branches across the State, provides a valuable service and does so at a time when people need it. The organisation provides the service to people who are very vulnerable. It is an important service that is easily accessed by people. SOSAD Ireland has been in existence for over 11 years. The Tullamore office has been in place for five years. The six branches do not receive HSE funding. An average of 60 people per week attend the service in Tullamore. The service is provided voluntarily. This week, 15 hours of voluntary counselling will be provided in Tullamore by accredited councillors. This is important. The councillors do not charge for the service and depend on contributions and fundraising to keep it going. The Minister of State will appreciate the difficulty. No matter what little service one runs, once one rents any premises at all and opens the front door, one faces costs of a couple of thousand euro per month.

Medics and other professionals are referring people to SOSAD. The referrals show that the service has a value. Attendees are not just from County Offaly but also from across the midlands. The Tullamore office will not be open after Christmas, however. It may not last until Christmas. It has sought HSE funding. SOSAD Ireland, the overarching body, has sought funding in the past from the HSE. It has been unsuccessful.

We know from the domestic violence groups and various other agencies providing valuable services in all our communities that they cannot rely solely on voluntary fundraising efforts. They need a core of funding to be able to provide their services. This State and all public representatives, at local and national levels, have seen money being spent. Sometimes we get a good return and sometimes we get a very poor return. Hand on heart, I would not have submitted this matter for discussion if I did not believe the service is providing value for money. If it saves one life, it will be worth it. The service could save a number of lives. Countless examples have been recounted to me, even in recent weeks, of clients with whom the service has dealt. I was told how the service has intervened and how people have received counselling and a sympathetic ear, and how they were referred to other services. In the approach to the budget, there will be a huge number of demands. Even those of us on this side of the House, Opposition Deputies, realise there is considerable lobbying and competition for funding. We are interested in mental health, and I know the Minister of State is also. He knows my party is genuine about this. Others in this House are also genuine about it. It is an issue that we need to deal with and help out with. I hope we can do something to put some little package of funding in place for the organisation in question.

Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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I acknowledge that the Deputy and his party always co-operate and take a positive approach to mental health issues. I have never found Members of the Deputy's party to be partisan or politically opportunistic in any shape or form regarding mental health. I include his party leader, Deputy McDonald, and Deputy Buckley in that. They have always been very constructive and co-operative.

I wish to raise a couple of issues concerning the Deputy's query, which concerns Tullamore. I am informed by the HSE that it does not have any record of an application for funding from SOSAD in Tullamore. My Department officials have made contact with SOSAD since the Deputy raised this issue in order to advise it that there are two ways to apply for funding. SOSAD Tullamore has been in existence for five years. The HSE is aware of its existence but does not have any record of any funding application from the charity. There are two avenues for an organisation such as SOSAD to apply for funding to the HSE. Both would be on the HSE website. One involves a section 38 or section 39 funding application. This would be the most substantial. There is also national lottery funding, administered by the HSE. It is available in small amounts. The application forms for both processes are available on the HSE website. My officials have made contact with SOSAD to advise it on both avenues but the HSE has informed me it has not received any application for funding to date from the organisation.

I acknowledge the bona fides of the organisation, which the Deputy has mentioned. I absolutely accept them. I appreciate the work that organisations such as SOSAD do. Effectively, they fill the gaps where they exist. Organisations such as SOSAD are organic, ground-up organisations. They do a power of work, particularly in such a sensitive and important area. We have the National Office for Suicide Prevention, the funding for which, I am glad to report, is increasing exponentially year on year. That funding stands at approximately €12 million per year. A total of 17 local Connecting For Life plans have been developed throughout the country and 15 have been launched. I am launching the sixteenth on 16 October in Kilkenny. There will be only one left to launch, namely, a localised plan whereby all the agencies will come together to combine their efforts to work towards the prevention of suicide. While one life lost to suicide is one too many, I am thankful that the number of lives being lost to suicide has been decreasing significantly year on year recently. We are having some success but I assure the Deputy that this does not encourage complacency on my part or that of my officials, or in the HSE or the National Office of Suicide Prevention. I welcome any opportunity discuss mental health issues, particularly those relating to suicide prevention. I thank the Deputy for his interest and for his contribution.

Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Minister of State for his response. There is a positive note in it. My information is that the national organisation applied for funding. From what the Minister of State outlined, I believe the local branches need to apply through the HSE locally for lottery funding. Section 38 and section 39 applications might be difficult because they tend to relate to the bigger organisations and agencies. Obviously, if funding can be secured through a section 38 section 39 application, so be it. From my limited knowledge, I am not sure that is how it is going to go. Perhaps the Minister State will come back to me on that. He gave some hope that genuine applications from genuine organisations at local level, such as SOSAD, will be considered sympathetically. I welcome the fact that he has accepted the bona fides of organisations. There are organisations that spring up whose bona fides may be questioned, along with the work they are doing. From what I can ascertain and from the feedback on the ground, however, SOSAD has really made a difference to a number of people's lives.

Many factors affect mental health. One is housing, on which we had a fairly heated debate this week. Employment is another. All these factors feed into mental health. Clinical medical health issues obviously have to be dealt with but societal issues can feed into mental health also. Unfortunately, when people get to the end of their tether and reach the point at which they are likely to self-harm, it is vital to have the grassroots organisations - this is the phrase the Minister of State used - at the front line to intervene. There is a very informal approach for people who visit the service. Not dealing with the problem has social, community and family costs. The rate of self-harm among young people and children soared by 22% in the past ten years. That is considerable so we really have to get to grips with the issue.

I welcome the Minister of State's response and will be taking back his message to SOSAD Tullamore. If he has further information, he might send me a written reply. If there are any other opportunities to secure funding for this organisation or others like it, the Minister of State might send me information in the next week or so. I thank him for his reply.

Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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I do not have any further information other than sections 38 and 39 and the national lottery funding. Both application forms are available on the website. There is no reason that a local organisation or a local branch of an organisation such as SOSAD could not apply for section 38 or section 39 funding. I saw recently that 1,027 organisations in the State that specifically help with mental health issues are receiving funding. That is one of the challenges we have because people do not know where to go when they have a mental health issue. For that reason I aim to establish a single access point for all mental health queries, be it a telephone line, text line or email, so people can be referred appropriately. If one is in the Tullamore region, for example, one will ring a single national telephone number. The person at the other end, who would be appropriately qualified, will say: "SOSAD is an organisation on our list, it is in the geographical area and it can offer the service", rather than SOSAD trying to make itself known to everybody. ALONE, Aware, Jigsaw and Pieta House are trying to do the same thing. They are all trying to sell their brand, as it were, and make people aware of their existence. We are trying to streamline a single access point for all these organisations, provided they have the appropriate level of governance be they clinical.

Many practitioners in the field of mental health and I are big supporters of organisations such as SOSAD. Lower levels of intervention can be very powerful. Not every young person needs to go into the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, which are led by a consultant psychiatrist. In some cases younger people just have anxiety issues and they do not need to be seen by a specialist service. That is why organisations such as the one the Deputy mentioned are so vital for early intervention, to ensure we can stop people going into the specialist services and the queues that build therein.