Written answers
Wednesday, 14 January 2015
Department of Health
Mental Health Services Funding
Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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572. To ask the Minister for Health if he will provide details of mental health funding including the commitment to €35 million of ring-fenced mental health funding per year since 2011; the amount and length of time the €35 million that was allocated in 2012 and 2013 was delayed; the proportion of the €20 million that was provided for mental health services in 2014 that was spent on these services; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49688/14]
Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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In line with the Programme for Government, my priority as Minister has been to modernise our mental health services, notwithstanding the severe resource constraints overall in recent years, and to prioritise new resources to underpin implementation of A Vision for Change.In that regard, the Government has provided an additional €125 million and some 1,100 posts for mental health comprising €35m with 416 posts in 2012, €35m with 477 posts in 2013, €20m for the recruitment of approximately 200 - 250 posts in 2014 and a further €35 million in 2015. The funding is being used to continue to strengthen Community Mental Health Teams for both adults and children, 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 to enhance access counselling and psychotherapy in primary care and investment in suicide prevention measures.
Details of the overall gross non-capital mental health budget are published annually in the Revised Book of Estimates. Based on that information, the table below details the mental health budget for each of the years 2011 - 2014 inclusive:
| 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 |
|---|---|---|---|
| €712 million | €711 million | €737 million | €766 million |
The estimated provision for mental health in 2015 is €791.8 million.
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 needed 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.
In relation to the €20 million provided in Budget 2014, the HSE National Service Plan provided for the phasing-in of the expenditure, in order for the HSE to live within its overall available resource across its service areas. It was planned that recruitment of 2014 posts would be started in order to provide for posts to come on stream during Quarter 4 and to this end, an amount of €5 million was expected to be spent in 2014 from the 2014 allocation. The HSE has informed me that a detailed analysis took place during 2014 of all 9,000 staff in Mental Health Services to inform the decision making process on the prioritised allocation of approximately 250 new posts. Although full recruitment did not takes place during Quarter 4 2014, the posts appointed required €0.250m with the remainder of the €5 million largely expended on the opening of unfunded but approved capacity in the National Forensic Service in order to provide sufficient extra capacity to meet the requirements of the Criminal Law Insanity Act. This €20 million is also now available to spend in full on mental health services in 2015, along with the new additional funding of €35m provided in Budget 2015.
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