Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome to the House. I congratulate her on the great work she has done on a difficult system since her appointment. As Senator Currie has highlighted, there is a lot of positive work being done in the Department. The Minister of State succeeded in securing one of the biggest ever budgets for mental health. She is well aware of the "buts", which are always a factor when a new Minister and a new Government are trying to fix everything. It is very difficult.

As a parent and citizen, I want to highlight how trust needs to be built back into the system after what happened in Kerry. We must ensure we trust all our medical services. Personally, I have a lingering mistrust in many of our services.This is based on personal experience. I had to fight for a diagnosis for myself and people did not believe me. I was not trusted. I have this innate mistrust myself. When I heard the desperate revelations in Kerry it instilled in me a sense of mistrust. I am here as a Government Senator who wants to trust and who wants to make sure the system is the best it can be. I wish the Minister of State luck with that. The work she has to do is very important.

The Minister of State said there is a massive budget and I very much welcome this. A lot of work is being done. I have a fear about how we are possibly putting a lot of money into a system that is broken. We cannot get enough answers. Even in disability services we see a system that needs to crank up and start listening to patients and look at local scenarios and what suits people. I agree with the previous speaker. There are staffing issues and issues with morale among staff. How do we as a government party support the Minister of State in her role to make sure we have trust in the system, morale and more staff? How do we make sure the system is reformed and people are accountable? We must have the ability to make people accountable for what they do wrong. In many situations this is how the citizen feels.

We need to make sure we fund State services. We have fantastic charitable organisations that do fantastic work. It is quicker to fund the charities because there is less rigmarole in putting people in place than there is in the HSE. We need to change this so it is easier to hire people in the HSE so we have them and the State controls the hours they work. They should work in the system and not outside of it. We really need them. This is not to downgrade what the charities do. We need people in the health services. We should not have to go to charities for critical care. I wish the Minister of State the very best of luck. I congratulate her on the hard work she is doing. She has a very big task. She has all of the support we can give.