Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Like Ivana Bacik, I thank the Minister of State for her personal commitment to tackling what is a difficult issue. We are always fighting about funds. I would go further than Senator Mary Moran and say that as well as splitting suicide from mental health, culturally, we also seem to want to split mental health from health. I do not understand why we persist with this because it involves the health of our minds and bodies. There always seems to be segregation of the money for mental health services. The job of the Minister of State is to pursue money and be an advocate for them. Culturally, closing the old institutions is helpful in terms of realising this is not the way to help people with mental health issues.

Notwithstanding those positive changes, so long as we persist in separating mental health and physical health, we will continue to have a dilemma about how we deal with these issues and fund the different services.

The Minister of State is aware of continued calls by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy for proper regulation of professionals working in this area. Some progress is being made in this area but, as the association has pointed out, without agreed standards it is impossible to monitor professionals effectively. Ireland is not a country with a long-established counselling culture; it is only in the past 30 years or so that these types of services have been available. The problem at this time is that I could go online this afternoon and pay €49 to obtain a diploma on counselling people with eating disorders. I know nothing about such disorders and would not dream of doing such a thing, but it would be easy for me or anybody else to avail of the proliferation of such offers. What it boils down to is that words and phrases like "counselling" and "mental health" are dirty words. If we persist in keeping mental health provision separate within the overall health system, we facilitate a situation where people can obtain a diploma after three days or three weeks training and set themselves up to help people with mental health problems.

I acknowledge that this issue is on the Minister of State's desk and she is aware of it, among the many other challenges she faces, but I am taking this opportunity to emphasise the need for action. The professionals who are offering these services want regulation and proper standards for people who are suffering. We must avoid a situation where vulnerable people end up taking advice from individuals who are not appropriately qualified.