Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to make a brief comment and I thank the Acting Chairman for allowing me the time to do so. I thank Senator Freeman for championing this important issue for young people. Sinn Féin is proud to support the motion.

We all know that mental health has never been adequately resourced and that services for young people are particularly absent. Mental health can no longer be left as an add-on at the end of the health budget. Sinn Féin's pre-budget submission and alternative budget allocated a €20 million fund in 2018 to speed up the roll-out of 24-7 crisis intervention services. I commend the Oireachtas on the parliamentary forum on mental health. I made the comment at the parliamentary forum that Dr. Tony Bates from Jigsaw speaks about the pillars of good mental health as having agency and control. Another contributor remarked on addressing injustices in society. I do not believe we can talk about building an inclusive society without acknowledging the urgent need to enable citizens to live at peace with their lives. Bulking up and expanding our mental health services must be done in parallel with addressing injustice and enabling people to live at peace with their lives, realising a person's right to a home, to marry the person they love, to live free from direct provision, to access gender recognition, to modern universal health care for women and to decency and democracy at work.

These are all affected by political choices and many of our citizens are continually dissatisfied with their existence. They do not feel they are listened to by the Government and very often that dissatisfaction leads to a search for the other and to scapegoating and marginalisation, as we see throughout a fractured Europe and across the world.Ireland's response to that must be to have a rights-based society where we build on the core human decency that is so common among our people. The expansion of our mental health service must be done in parallel with addressing justice and enabling people to live in peace. Many Members believe in social justice and many believe in proper mental health services. Can we own and run with those beliefs?