Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Colm Burke. It is the first time I have had an opportunity to congratulate him on his appointment. I say "Well done" to him. He is no stranger to this House. I really appreciate his being here.

I thank the Green Party for proposing this important motion on loneliness.

I acknowledge the enormous amount of work that former Senator Keith Swanick did in this area. He was a Senator for several years. He assembled an impressive group of people and produced a document called A Connected Island - an Ireland free from Loneliness and issued a number of important asks and tasks. Needless to say, many of them have not been done. That is a pity because there were very eminent members on the task force, representing a wide sector of stakeholders in this area. I ask the Minister of State to dust off that report. Too many reports sit up on shelves gathering dust. We do not need any more reports. We know what the challenges are around loneliness, social isolation and exclusion. We do not know enough about the demographics of it but we know a lot about the impact of it, as the previous Senators have outlined. I ask that this report be taken down again and looked at because it is a very important piece of work.

We cannot talk about loneliness in isolation from mental health. Mental health is so important. Many people are still coming to terms with it. I am particularly conscious of rural communities and farmers, particularly single rural farmers. In many cases, but not all, those with whom I deal are men who, being the eldest, have inherited the farm. For many reasons they have not established a partnership or relationship with anybody else. They feel a duty of care and responsibility to keep on the homestead and the tradition of agriculture. With all of that, they pay a price. That price is isolation, loneliness and the responsibility of the inheritance, destiny, lineage and heritage of the family resting on their shoulders.In the end it takes its toll. For many, this has happened late in life and they have become older, isolated and vulnerable. I speak of family members of my own who have had this experience. Sadly, one of them committed suicide. It was afterwards when the family came back to the rural homestead in the hills of Wicklow that they suddenly discovered a whole other story through what was left behind in that home. When you go back into the homestead of a single old man, which might not have had anyone in it for six, eight or ten years, it peels back issues around alcoholism, isolation and a range of others that make it very sad. We discovered then that we were only beginning to accept people in those situations. We did not provide them with the space or capacity to be themselves and to be their authentic selves. All this feeds into the isolation, loneliness and mental health issues of people in this situation. It is a very sad picture. There is a wake-up call in this area. It knows no bounds and affects those of all ages. It is not all old people, marginalised people or minorities. Clearly, there are real issues here in this regard. The farming organisations, in particular, have done a lot of work on this issue. It is one that exists in rural and urban areas. It is an amazing challenge to address it.

I wish to touch on mental health reform and promoting efforts to improve mental health. In this briefing document, sent out on 1 May 2024, the opening remarks refer to the Government's commitments on loneliness assigned to the Department of Health not yet having been progressed. I draw the Minister of State's attention to this text. I am sure he has a copy of the document but I will send another one to him anyway. Three key messages are set out in it. We know these are echoed in the Green Party's motion. There is a reference to the programme for Government. Page 51 of that document refers to a commitment to "Develop a plan aimed at tackling loneliness and isolation, especially among older people, as outlined in the Roadmap for Social Inclusion" policy document. We are coming to the end of this Government's term and, sadly, this matter has not got priority. There are many other priorities, so this is not to be critical of the Government. It cannot get everything over the line. It is progress that we are even talking about this issue today.

Loneliness is an important issue. I appreciate that the Green Party has highlighted it in this motion. It is important this issue is addressed. I touched earlier on the Department of the Taoiseach and the expert group. This is an important request. Fulfilling the programme for Government commitment is another ask. I fully support this too. It is late in the day, but it is right that we should keep the focus on this in the next few months.

The Minister of State's suggestion in respect of this motion in the name of the Green Party, mandating every local authority to prepare a local strategy, is a very good idea. The people in the local authorities are those on the ground and they are familiar with what is going on there. It is important to address loneliness through the use of the public realm, including public libraries and other buildings. Some ring-fenced funding, however, will be needed to do this. City and county managers will also need to identify a key person in each local authority to drive this initiative.

I congratulate the Green Party councillors on their work. There is a lot of information available, as I said. This includes A Connected Island: an Ireland Free from Loneliness by Dr. Keith Swanwick, a former Senator, and the mental health reform paper that was sent to us. There is a lot in this material, and if the Minister of State could take it on board, we would be making steady progress.