Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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301. To ask the Minister for Health his views on the considerable savings that the State may make by frontloading investment in mental health services, rather than the current funding model; if he would like to see changes in the funding model going forward; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [56474/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Developing Mental Health services remains a priority for Government. The total allocation for mental health in Budget 2023 is over €1.2 billion, which represents a significant incremental increase in investment from around €700m per year around a decade ago. This is another record budget for mental health services, which will underpin implementation of the widely agreed policies Sharing the Vision (2020-30) and Connecting for Life to enhance all aspects of mental health care, including  new service developments nationally.

Funding for current expenditure including mental health services is allocated on an annual (single- year) basis through the Estimates process with future levels of funding considered as part of the national estimates and budgetary process.

There is no multi-annual funding for current expenditure.  However, I am aware that there has been a discussion paper published by the Department of Public Expenditure that highlights the benefits of introducing multi annual funding and discusses the possible future introduction of it for the Garda Siochana vote.

I acknowledge that there are potential benefits of introducing multi-annual funding to improve planning over a multi annual horizon on a more structured/sustainable timeframe than a single year. However there currently exist a range of legislative barriers to the introduction of such a funding mechanism for current expenditure on health services.

The position is different in relation to capital expenditure where the National Development Plan sets out the longer-term investment plan over multiple years.