Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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175. To ask the Minister for Health the status of his Department’s implementation of the health and well-being package of supports for former residents of Mother and Baby Homes and Related Institutions announced in 2019. [32122/20]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The package of health and wellbeing supports for former residents of Mother and Baby Homes and Related Institutions includes the provision of additional counselling services to help support the needs of former residents, the introduction of a dedicated patient advocacy liaison service for former residents and the commencement of a targeted health research study, which will assist in the development of any future service responses that may be required.

Funding to begin implementation of the counselling and patient liaison services was sanctioned from Quarter 1 2020.  However, progress on these initiatives has unfortunately not been possible due to the need to prioritise the response to Covid-19, including a significant expansion of mental health counselling services and supports for the wider population.

I appreciate that this may be disappointing news for former residents, but I can assure them that my officials are engaging with the HSE to establish how best the introduction of these supports can now be progressed in the current environment.

The targeted health research study, which will be carried out by TILDA - The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing - was also temporarily put on hold as a result of public health restrictions but work has now recommenced on this project.