Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The development of real alternatives to emergency departments continues to be a key priority for the Government.

I continue to advance various initiatives to support access to services, and to ensure that people with mental health difficulties can access the emergency supports that they need. These include:

• Prioritising the ongoing work of the National Clinical Programme for Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideation in relation to the issue of assessment rooms and securing safe, dedicated spaces within all emergency departments for mental health assessments.
• Continued national roll-out of Suicide Crisis Assessment Nurses (SCAN Nurses).
• The roll-out of a network of Crisis Resolution Teams and Crisis 'Solace' Cafes, providing an extensive range of community services focused on resolving mental health crises within mental health services, and avoiding emergency department presentation.
• A new model of care for Liaison Psychiatry (in emergency departments and acute hospitals) has been developed by the HSE and was launched on 29 May 2025.
• The Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) Operational Plan reduction in cumulative daily trolley count in 2024 and key focus in the 2025 plan on expansion of all UEC services into evenings and weekends.

I continue to work to shift supports for those in crisis away from hospitals and into services in our communities, acknowledging that the emergency department is often not the most appropriate environment for supporting people in distress.

I have overseen the development of the new Model of Care for Crisis Resolution Services, which has two components, Crisis Resolution Teams and Crisis Cafés.

Crisis Resolution Teams are teams of mental health professionals who work out of hours to meet people in a crisis and provide rapid assessment and intensive intervention. There are now six pilot Crisis Resolution Teams currently operational in different parts of the country. Crisis Cafés are a welcoming, non-clinical safe environment in the style of a café where people can go at evenings and weekends. These are known as 'Solace' cafés, and a number are now open in different locations. The model of care for Crisis Resolution Services was developed as a direct recommendation of Sharing the Vision, Ireland’s national mental health policy. It recognises that people who are experiencing a mental health crisis need specialist services to provide timely brief intensive supports to keep people safe.

In addition to the above, the HSE Child and Youth Mental Health Office published a new 3-year action plan in February of this year for comprehensive reform across all youth mental health services, including the specialist CAMHS service. This will deliver services which are safer, effective, easier to access and which offers appropriate support at all levels when needed.

The three-year plan sets out a clear roadmap for the Department and HSE to ensure children and families have equitable and timely access to high-quality mental health care, including better links with Primary Care and Disability Services, and greater use of e-mental health responses.

Key aims are to ensure young people nationally can access in a more comprehensive and integrated way, youth focused Mental Health care at the right time in the right place as envisaged under Sláintecare reforms. Services should be better connected and easier to navigate, with increased focus on the rights of young people and their families.

The new plan commits to developing an Integrated Crisis Response Pathway for children and young people experiencing a mental health crisis across the 24/7 continuum of care, including an improved child and youth liaison service with Emergency Departments.

As the Deputy is aware, this work has been guided by our outgoing national suicide reduction strategy, Connecting for Life, through different actions to help us achieve our goal to reduce the number of people we lose to suicide every year. Grounded in international best practice, Connecting for Life has provided a comprehensive framework for suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention across the country. This strategy came to the end of its life in 2024 and the Department of Health is currently developing a successor strategy which will build on the good work done under Connecting for Life.

To inform the development of the next national suicide reduction strategy the Department of Health recently ran a public consultation. This public consultation has been completed and three reports arising from this work were published on the 10th of September. The findings from this work will be invaluable in informing the new national suicide reduction strategy, providing insights from those with lived experience of suicide, professionals working in relevant contexts, and NGO's doing work in this area.

To assist in this work Minister Butler recently appointed 22 members to an Expert Advisory Group to guide the development of Ireland’s next national suicide reduction strategy. The Expert Advisory Group for the next suicide reduction strategy will play a central role in shaping the strategy, ensuring it is informed by the findings from the public consultation, in which many people with lived experience of suicide participated, as well as the latest evidence, and cross-sectoral expertise.

This expert group is chaired by Dr Eileen Williamson, former CEO of the National Suicide Research Foundation, who brings a wealth of experience to the role from her 29 years working in the area of suicide prevention.

In addition, a Lived Experience Reference Group has been appointed, which will ensure that the voices of those with lived experience will be central to the development of this strategy; informing, critiquing and guiding the development of recommendations in tandem with the Expert Advisory Group. This group will be chaired by Joe O'Donovan and coordinated by the National Suicide Research Foundation.

I am committed to the development of a new suicide reduction strategy that will take full account of the findings of public consultation, the latest evidence, as well as the views of both the Expert Advisory Group and the Lived Experience Reference Group. This will be done with a view to ensuring we continue to see a reduction in suicide in Ireland and provide the services and supports that those in crisis, and those who are bereaved by suicide, want and need.