Seanad debates

Friday, 12 February 2021

Mental Health and Covid-19: Statements

 

10:30 am

Photo of Martin ConwayMartin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing half my time with Senator Seery Kearney.

I welcome the Minister of State back to the House. I wish her well in what is an absolutely daunting challenge, particularly in the area of mental health. It is daunting because successive governments from all sides failed to invest incrementally over the years in mental health services. As such, the Minister of State has taken over an area that has seen significant underinvestment. I welcome the fact there is a significant commitment in the programme for Government to invest in mental health and mental health services. I also welcome the fact that, in last year's budget, which was the first of the current Government, there was a significant increase in the resources made available to mental health services.

We are all aware of the pandemic and the absolute challenges people have faced in respect of their mental health. They may not necessarily have had major issues with their mental health before the pandemic although I believe everybody does have such issues to some extent. People who did not have a significant challenge previously have found it difficult. For those who have had challenges, it has been incredibly difficult.

I very much feel for the 60,000 leaving certificate students who have not got a clue what is happening or what is going to happen and who are in limbo. This poses mental health challenges in the run-up to what will have been one of the most important events in their lives to that point, namely, the sitting of the leaving certificate examinations. I hope this matter is concluded with urgency.The investment in mental health has to be multi-annual and it has to continue to grow because we are fixing a broken system. Too many people have lost their lives as a result of a lack of intervention at the right time. We all know stories of people who presented themselves to hospital seeking help, who reached out looking for help and were told they were okay and not ill enough or bad enough to be admitted to hospital and who then went and took their own life. I know one case in my county that happened in the last number of months. It is unacceptable and disgraceful.

There are many people out there whose hearts are in the right place and who want to do the right thing. When tragedies have happened in communities, people have set up different foundations, fundraising initiatives and so on. I have raised this at the Joint Sub-Committee on Mental Health, which our colleague, Senator Black, chairs, and with the Minister. There are many well-intentioned organisations out there duplicating each other - it could be in the region of nearly 1,000 - that offer various supports for mental health. My worry is that their good intentions are not being channelled in the right direction. We need to review the various organisations around the country in the area of mental health and see if we can bring them together under a united meitheal approach. We should look at great work being done by Pieta and others. We need to learn from experience and ensure all resources are being channelled in the right direction to have maximum impact.

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