Joan Freeman (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It was lovely to hear the speech of the Minister of State. There was great sincerity there, but what he said also sounded nearly believable. It is very typical of his Department to roll out figures, but we are still waiting for action. He has to defend his Department and that is his job, but there is also the practical element of being truthful about the very serious shortfalls. He mentioned the National Office for Suicide Prevention. I was involved in this issue when the first national strategy for suicide prevention, Reach Out, was created and implemented. Ten years later, nothing had been done. In its wisdom, the Department decided to create another document, Connect for Life, which the Minister of State recently launched. This is an example of something the Government is very good at and that happens all the time, which is its really good way of kicking the can down the road by creating and reviewing reports. The Minister of State spoke of a charity that sees the report as good news it can tell its donors about how suicide rates are decreasing. A critical point he missed is that there are approximately 500 charities in Ireland that deal with suicide and it is thanks to those charities that suicide rates have gone down, not thanks to the Government nor the NOSP, which really is just monitoring everything.

The Minister of State said he was not defensive but it is fine to be defensive. He mentioned that €140 million has been added to the mental health budget in the past five years. He said it is the only service that has had a 20% increase in its budget. The section of that budget allocated to children's mental health services was 13% in 1984. In 2004, it dropped to 7.6% and last year it was 6.1% so there has been no increase but, rather, a chronic decrease in that allocation. This debate was about the budget for mental health services. Even if the overall budget is not to increase by €1 million, I ask the Minister of State to seriously consider increasing the portion allocated to children's mental health from that miserable 6% to 12%. That must be fundamental. Our services will never get better if they are not brought back up to the proper standard. Children make up 23% of those accessing mental health services in Ireland but we are giving them 6% of our mental health budget.

I again thank the Minister of State for coming to the House on this issue. He could have sent somebody in his place but had the courage to listen to me giving out and I appreciate that. I also thank the Senators who gave their very important input into this important topic. I thank everybody else for the continuing lovely comments they have made. I appreciate it and it makes me want to work even harder.