Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

The issues I will raise are not those I thought I would be talking about.This morning we had the first meeting of the Sub-Committee on Mental Health of the Joint Committee on Health. Senator Black is not here at present, but I commend her on getting that committee set up. We had a fruitful discussion about mental health during Covid and the knock-on effects that we will see for society and our mental services beyond Covid. I will mostly talk about some of the issues we discussed this morning. We have had reference to mental health already.

An interesting point that came up was around accessing mental health services at present. The group talking to the sub-committee was Mental Health Reform. It feels that those with mental health difficulties are less likely currently during Covid to reach out to seek help with pre-existing mental health conditions. I was taken aback by that. This is a very difficult period for people. Everyone is struggling through this, and when the group said that, it was the first time I had heard that it feels that people who have pre-existing mental health difficulties have been reticent to come forward.

We went on to discuss accessing mental health services post Covid or towards the end of it. We have not had in living memory perhaps such a far-reaching collective experience as a nation of struggle and difficulty, and everyone being in the same boat, while simultaneously having the most individual and isolating experience. I certainly do not recall us having such a collective experience and I hope I never have to again. We discussed how we are putting out messages about how to keep oneself well that will possibly have an impact on people feeling that they can come forward and say that this has been hard and it is affecting their mental health. We are all listing to the podcasts, baking the banana bread, going on our walks and doing all of our things, but that will not be enough for many people. While we are all saying that we should pull ourselves together, we are all in this together and everyone should put their best foot forward, we discussed earlier how that will impact people feeling a stigma around coming forward. There is a lot of stigma around mental health as it is. We are constantly trying to encourage people to talk about it, but it was a very interesting discussion around how we have all gone through this and put our best forward.

I am interested to know if there are any plans, not that the Minister of State has to answer me right now on this issue. In that context, however, I wish to flag to him that we may need to think about mental health and how we are accessing people in a different way. While we are putting out the message of collectivism and we are all in this together, that may result in people feeling that they do not have a right or a reason to put themselves forward to say that they are struggling with this. I just thought I would flag that with the Minister of State.

We talked about expenditure on mental health as an investment. I would say it is an investment when we invest in mental health services, not a cost. It becomes a cost when people cannot access services. It becomes a cost to them personally and to the people around them - their friends or their family. Then it becomes, I would say, a cost to the State because it becomes more costly to treat people with mental health difficulties the longer it takes for them to access them. I thought I would flag that we need to have a strong plan of focus on mental health going forward.

Reflecting on the Keep Well campaign that launched a month ago, that involves real steps that we all can take. I can look on that website and recognise a suggestion for me to do, but we need to make sure that there are a series of things that are beyond the things that I can do within my own daily realm of well-being and life. This investment is important.

Someone said at the subcommittee earlier that the fourth wave of Covid, which they think will be the largest and longest wave of Covid, will be the mental health wave that comes afterwards. While we prepare for exiting out of Covid, that is what I want to emphasise because it was the first meeting of the Sub-committee on Mental Health today and it was such a brilliant discussion. I would recommend it, if anyone wanted to listen in on it. Mental Health Reform was brilliant in talking us through a litany of issues. It was a brilliant subcommittee meeting this morning. We really need to prepare, and we have to move quite quickly in making plans for what will come at the other side of Covid.

I will quickly hop on to the almost weekly waltz I have with the Minister of State concerning our front-line workers and the respect and pay we give to them. We cannot come out of the global pandemic where we have all been lauding our front-line workers, where we have all stood at our front doors clapping, where we have put candles in the windows and where we have done all of the things that we can do and not have a fundamental shift in how we treat, appreciate and value our front-line workers in terms of their pay and working conditions. I cannot, and I would certainly think that no one else here would, stand over us continuing to treat them they way we do. Of course, I will put in my pitch, as I do every week with the Minister of State, for our student nurses. They are on the front line, they are not being paid, and they are on the Covid wards. I would hope, as we look at our plan for exiting out of Covid, that we really think about how we value and treat the front-line workers who got us through it.