Written answers

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Department of Health

Mental Health Services Funding

Photo of Colm KeaveneyColm Keaveney (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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111. To ask the Minister for Health the position regarding the underspend of €46.8million in the mental health budget in 2013; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42765/14]

Photo of Kathleen LynchKathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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Budgetary and other pressures within the HSE delayed the full utilisation of the €35 million allocated in both 2012 and 2013. The underspend in planned Mental Health expenditure and the timing of the recruitment of staff developments was also due to the time required to get various programmes up and running, such as Counselling in Primary Care, Enhanced Teamworking, Mental Health Information System, Clinical Programmes and the opening of additional in-patient beds.

Additional funding of €35 million in Budget 2015 brings to €125 million the total investment for mental health services since 2012, for the development and modernisation of the services in line with the recommendations of A Vision for Change,mostly in the way of additional posts to strengthen Community Mental Health Teams for both adults and children. The additional funding is also being used to enhance specialist community mental health services for older people with a mental illness, those with an intellectual disability and mental illness, forensic mental health services and suicide prevention initiatives.

At the end of September an additional 770 posts of the 890 provided for in 2012 and 2013 had been recruited with the remainder at various stages in the recruitment process, with some difficulties in identifying some outstanding candidates for geographic and qualification reasons. Therefore, approximately 77% of combined 2 years posts have taken up duty.

In relation to 2014, while €20 million was provided for mental health services, the HSE National Service Plan outlined that this expenditure would be phased-in, in order for the HSE to live within the overall available resource in 2014. Accordingly, it was decided that the recruitment of 2014 posts would be commenced to provide for posts to come on stream during the last quarter of 2014. To this end, and informed by the analysis carried out, some 200 posts have now been identified from the 2014 allocation and the recruitment process has now commenced. It is important to stress, however, that the entire underspent funds have been made available to Mental Health for spend in 2014 and subsequent years.

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