Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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90. To ask the Minister for Health the way in which the €24 million announced for new measures funding for mental health will be spent; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50784/21]

Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I, like the many people who advocate for better mental health care, waited with much anticipation for the mental health budget to come out this year. With the emphasis there was on mental health over the past 20 months, I was disappointed to see an allocation of only €24 million in new development funding for mental health. What exactly will this €24 million be spent on? Does the Minister of State believe it is adequate to meet the demand in mental health?

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for his question. This year saw the largest budget allocation to mental health in the State's history at €1.149 billion. The year 2022 will see an additional €47 million for mental health services, comprising the €24 million the Deputy mentioned for new developments, €10 million for mental health initiatives in response to Covid and €13 million for existing level of service. The €24 million is being prioritised for the continued development of mental health services, including out-of-hours supports, child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and mental health clinical programmes. I have clear priorities as the Minister of State with special responsibility for mental health. These include dealing with the primary care psychology waiting list. I am also very clear about trying to reduce the number of young people waiting for access to CAMHS appointments. I am very clear in relation to the continued roll-out of the clinical programmes, which have proven very successful to date.

The moneys I have secured, coupled with clearing the €53 million historical deficit I inherited last year, means I will be able to recruit 350 whole-time equivalent staff. Mental health services for older people will also be developed, in line with the model of care for specialist mental health services for older people that will be piloted next year. A sum €6 million will be used to continue to enhance the capacity of community mental health teams. It is very important we have these teams on the ground. There will be €1.4 million in new funding for crisis resolution services. I recently announced a new crisis resolution team for community healthcare organisation, CHO, 5, which will be based in Waterford, Dungarvan and south County Kilkenny. There will be 14 whole-time equivalent staff there. As such, there is €1.4 million because we are going to roll out those pilots, and another €1.15 million will be allocated to specialist eating disorder teams in CHOs 1, 3, 5 and 6. I am really happy that by the end of next year we will have nine full eating disorder teams in place. I will answer more in the next session.

Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I acknowledge the work the Minister of State has done on the €53 million in debts. That was very welcome and did say it would work in a tangible way. To put it into context, the budget she has outlined is the same amount of money that was in the 2008 budget. We have not gone forward since 2008. We are still playing catch-up in the provision of mental health services.

The Minister of State mentioned the €47 million figure. If you break that down and go into it, €13 million is, as she said, for existing service levels. That is basically maintenance money to keep things going the way they are. It is standing still money. The €10 million is, as the Minister of State mentioned, one-off funding that must be spent by the end of the year. It is not for new services, staff, buildings or anything like that. That leaves the €24 million. Mental Health Reform recommended €85 million. The Sinn Féin alternative budget recommended €114 million be committed to mental health funding. I ask the Minister of State again whether she believes €24 million is an adequate response to the mental health challenges we are facing.

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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Due to my past as a person who was in business for 17 years, I was, and still am, really good at figures. Last year the budget for mental health was €1.076 billion. This year it is €1.149 billion, an increase of €73 million because of clearing the historical deficit, which will give me 350 whole-time equivalents. Last year, the extra €23 million I secured only gave me 153 whole-time equivalents, so the amount of money I have this year will be significant because there are challenges, as we all know, with recruitment and retention. There is no doubt about that. We are working very hard to populate all those clinical programmes and get those staff in place.

You can pick out different areas in budgets but one area I am really pleased about is the new model of care for older people which will be advanced. We are all familiar with the integrated care programme for older persons, ICPOP, but they never include a psychiatry of later life element, so I will be able to roll out three pilots next year in relation to that.

Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Some of the challenges we have relate to our waiting lists. I noted Deputy Cullinane was talking about those for children earlier on. I got a couple of parliamentary question responses back this week. At the moment we have 8,832 people waiting on primary care psychology. Of those, 7,849 of these are children and 3,777 of these children are waiting more than 12 months for treatment. There are 302 children aged five years or under waiting more than a year for an appointment. That is almost 20% of their lives they have spent waiting for an appointment for mental health treatment, and we all say early intervention is key. CAMHS has another 2,625 children waiting for appointments, and in excess of 400 of these children are waiting more than six months. In the response, three months for a child to get treatment seems to be a target for getting an appointment with CAMHS. That should not be a target. When a child needs intervention, he or she should be able to get.

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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I am really glad the Deputy has given me the opportunity to talk about the primary care psychology list, because when I came into post last year I inherited the highest ever waiting lists in that area. I spoke at length with the Minister to see how we could deal with this. In the short term what I have put in place is as follows. For September, October, November and December of this year, €4 million was allocated to the nine CHOs. I asked them to come to me with a proposal. Would they do overtime on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights? Would they hire a locum on a Saturday? Would they go for private capacity? Would they try to put in a surge in public capacity to try to deal with this? I am glad to see the numbers are coming down and I will have a report at the end of October, which is midway through. We also need to put a permanent process in place and we will deal with that through working with the Minister. There will be many staff recruited within the budget process. We are also looking at a waiting list initiative. We want to clear this waiting list and we know each child might need, four, six, eight or ten appointments. It is not just about one appointment. We are working towards it.