Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I do not know about others but this is the second time I have been in these buildings for a budget. It seems really lacklustre. Maybe there is a missed opportunity. I am not sure how to describe it. The two national emergencies in this country are housing and health. This opportunity for a budget to actually do something meaningful for the people of this country has been missed. I am pretty disappointed and I am sure that many people around the country are disappointed too. I want to concentrate on health because that is my area of expertise.This budget failed to grasp the urgency and emergency that is the health crisis in this country. The INMO and the nursing organisations have come out to describe it as disappointing and regressive from a health perspective. Let us take the example of children being admitted to psychiatric wards. This has happened to two children in my own area of Dublin South-Central in the last month alone, something that is being replicated across the country. Some are left on plastic chairs without even the luxury of a so-called trolley.

We have a paucity of front line staff in our health system. We chased so many out, people who will not now come back because of the stressful conditions and disrespectful treatment by the Governments of the last ten years. I went to Cappagh hospital last week to visit a relative who had had a knee replacement. I was surprised to find only three beds filled and thought that maybe this was because it was a quiet week. I asked the staff there about it and it turns out that of the nine beds there, they only ever admit three patients at a time because they do not have the staff to carry out those operations. One can only imagine the people on the ever-growing waiting lists waiting for year after year in chronic pain and knowing that there are six vacant beds in Cappagh hospital. This is not prudent and makes no sense at all.

If the Minister wants to spin this into claiming that this health budget is the biggest in the history of the State then he needs to do the maths. We have an increasing population that needs to be taken into account, rising demands, increased availability of modern treatments and we have an increase in the population over 65. This so-called "biggest health budget in the history of the State" does not cut it because it does not take changes in demographics, ageing and new treatments into account.

Nurses and doctors will continue to leave in their droves, leaving workplaces that are unfit for their practice. There are no available homes for them to rent or buy because of the housing emergency. How much of the health budget will be sneakily returned? Let us take the example of the €20 million that was returned last year from the €35 million that we had been promised for mental heath for many years, something that caused a furore outside the gates of these Houses in March of last year. Let us also take the €17 million that was returned from Roscommon. The Department claimed that no moneys had been returned but, lo and behold, two days later a report came out establishing that €17 million had been given back.

I want to really question where the €35 million allocation for mental health funding mysteriously goes every year. It is not certainly not seen on the front line, in extra CAMHS teams, in occupational therapy, in intellectual disability, and it is certainly not seen being spent on people with disabilities, as Senator Dolan has so eloquently and passionately discussed.

I want to end with a reminder to the Minister that this health budget, and mental health budget in particular, is far too low. The A Vision for Change strategy document for mental health services recommended that it be increased to 8.5% at a minimum. This health budget leaves us standing still; there is none of the vision to go forward that we saw in A Vision for Change. About an hour ago Fine Gael tweeted that the mental health budget has risen to €885 million, an increase of €35 million. Mental Health Reform has tweeted in response to say that in accordance with the figures Fine Gael provided in its tweets - and maybe Fine Gael needs to have a look at that - this only amounts to an increase of €11.3 million. We need clarification on this from the Minister for Health and the Minister of State with special responsibility for mental health. We need them to give us the facts, the plans and the strategies and we need them to keep the money in the mental health budget pocket.