Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Renua Ireland)
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343. To ask the Minister for Health his plans to improve mental health services; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2040/16]

Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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Since coming into office, this Government has made significant efforts to prioritise mental health care. We have provided €160 million ring-fenced funding and approved 1,150 new posts for mental health since 2012 up to the end of 2016, to modernise services in line with A Vision for Changeand Programme for Government commitments. This includes €35 million provided for 2016, bringing the total budget available for the mental health this year to €826.6 million. A key focus has been additional posts to strengthen Community Mental Health Teams for both adults and children. This funding is also being used to enhance specialist community mental health and forensic services, increase the access to counselling and psychotherapy and for suicide prevention initiatives.

In 2016, our priorities will include the continued development of counselling services across both primary and secondary care including the provision of three new Jigsaw mental health services in Cork, Dublin city centre and Limerick; the continued development of Community Mental Health Teams; improved 24/7 response and Liaison Services; Psychiatry of Later Life; Perinatal Mental Health, and two new mental health clinical programmes, specifically, ADHD in Adults and Children, and Dual Diagnosis of those with Mental Illness and Substance Misuse.

The HSE in is National Service Plan for 2016 has also committed to:

- Ensuring that the views of service users, family members and carers are central to the design and delivery of mental health services;

- Designing integrated evidence based and recovery focused mental health services;

- Delivering timely, clinically effective and standardised safe mental health services in adherence to statutory requirements;

- Promoting the mental health of the population in collaboration with other services and agencies including reducing loss of life by suicide; and

- Enabling the provision of mental health services by highly trained and engaged staff and fit for purpose infrastructure.

Plans for the Mental Health Service also include the development of a new National Forensic Mental Health Service (NFMHS) hospital, which will be built on the site of St. Ita's Hospital, Portrane. Work on improving the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Services will continue, thus ensuring that all aspects of the service are delivered in a consistent and timely fashion, including improved access. The HSE recently introduced a new Standard Operating Procedurefor both in-patient and community CAMHS services. This will help improve the service overall, such as reducing inappropriate admissions of adolescents to adult units, and reducing Waiting Lists, particularly for those waiting over 12 months. Those waiting 12 months or more has decreased by 55% from 459 at end of April 2015 to 207 in November 2015.

Other priorities include the drafting of a General Scheme of a Bill to reflect the changes recommended by the Expert Group review of the Mental Health Act 2001, the review of A Vision for Change which will be 10 years old this year, and the implementation of Connecting for Life- Ireland's National Strategy to Reduce Suicide 2015 - 2020.