Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Front-line services are provided by consultants, nurses and psychologists and they must be paid. Pay increases are part of front-line services. There is no difference. In addition to the €29 million, €55 million is for new developments and services. The current range of services will be expanded for children and adolescents, adults, eating disorders, mental health of intellectual disability, MHID, to provide easier access pathways, some online therapies and a crisis digital text line.We have loads of ambition in mental health and we have loads of new positive initiatives that we want to roll out. I also hope to provide a funding stream for voluntary organisations on the ground such as sporting clubs that have great capacity to reach out to and build resilience among young people, and to support those efforts. We have huge ambition in the whole area of mental health. We are putting the resources behind this with more than €1 billion. We continue to have challenges such as recruitment of skilled personnel. There is a worldwide shortage of consultant psychiatrists. To tackle this I have tried to look at the whole area of the online space and e-delivery of mental health, which is supported by many groups, organisations and professionals such as the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland, who believe this is a way to enhance and add quality to the service we provide. We are very ambitious for mental health and we have a very busy programme for the year ahead. We are putting the resources behind this and I am confident. We will not solve everything and we will not find the perfect panacea, but we will greatly enhance the range of very comprehensive services that are there. There will always be faults and failings and it will always be possible to pick out the individual who is being let down, but mental health services are being delivered by individuals and there will always be situations where someone is not diagnosed, treated or accommodated appropriately. This will continue until we go into a full-time service run by robots. In the meantime we are going to have to deal with those challenges and acknowledge them, not run away from them.

The HSE service plan has a significant focus on the further development of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, CAMHS, against a background where the population of children is increasing and where the demand for CAMHS has seen an increase of over 20% since 2012. Some 18,800 referrals are expected for HSE CAMHS this year, with approximately 14,300 being seen by this specialist service.

There are now 69 CAMHS teams, and three paediatric liaison teams, supported by around 50 operational CAMHS beds nationally, with further resources planned to come on-stream in the future. Since 2012, more than 1,500 new health professionals have been recruited for mental health to improve services, despite difficulties in recruiting and retaining specialist staff. I am satisfied that the HSE is working to provide the best possible service within available staffing resources and they have my full support in this regard.

In concluding my remarks here this evening, I believe it is important, insofar as we can, to have legislation that does not differentiate between issues of capacity and consent in relation to physical and mental health. I want to once again thank Senator Devine and her colleagues for introducing this Bill. We are in agreement that the principle of the change being proposed needs to be made and I am certain that we can agree the text changes necessary to the Bill to effect this change as proposed.