World Mental Health Day: Statements

I will be sharing time with three colleagues. I am glad of the opportunity to speak about mental health in advance of World Mental Health Day on 10 October. Mental health is something that touches every one of us, whether personally, through our families and loved ones or through the experiences of people in our communities across the country. I would like to begin by drawing everyone's attention to this year's theme for World Mental Health Day, which is, "Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change". This theme reminds us of the simple truth that people who have experienced mental health challenges are experts in their own lives and their voices must be at the centre of how we design, deliver and improve mental health services. I can confidently say that people's authentic lived and living experiences of mental health have been firmly at the heart of my role as Minister of State with responsibility for mental health. I know that the voices of people who use our mental health services, their family members and carers and other committed advocates help us to better understand what is working well and where we need to improve. They are voices that challenge assumptions, reduce stigma and promote compassion. Each voice helps us to build services that are responsive to the realities of people's lives. Lived experience is not anecdotal. It is a form of expertise in its own right. It is distinct from but equal to clinical and policy knowledge and it must be recognised as such within our policymaking processes. That means moving beyond individual perspectives to help articulate shared priorities, values and evidence ensuring that policy decisions are grounded in real-world needs and outcomes. This is my seventh budget as Minister of State with responsibility for mental health and I believe there is real momentum in mental health reform and service development. Over recent years, we have driven significant progress in expanding specialist mental health services and delivering the reforms set out in Sharing the Vision. These reforms are no longer simply policy commitments. They are now visible in services, supports and interventions that are improving people's lives across the country. When I first became Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, there were approximately 220 specialist mental health teams in place. Today, that number is approaching 300 with further teams in development and recruitment continuing across our national clinical programmes. Those teams are transforming how we deliver care. They support people with increasingly complex needs, manage higher levels of clinical risk and provide more specialised, responsive and person-centred care for individuals and families when they need it most. We also now have significant funds available to advance capital mental health projects with €470 million for mental health under the NDP health allocation 2026 to 2030. This will help us to deliver critical new mental health infrastructure, including a perinatal mother and baby unit and new adult eating disorder inpatient centres. In next year’s budget, for the first time, I have allocated funding to appoint an assistant national director based in HSE capital and estates to really drive mental health capital projects. I am really serious about delivering new infrastructure and spending our full allocation over the next five years. We have enacted the Mental Health Act 2026 delivering the most significant modernisation of our mental health legislation in a generation. We continue to increase investment in prevention and early intervention recognising that supporting people earlier leads to better outcomes. Last year, we launched free mental health supports for men and already more than 8,000 men have accessed support, many for the first time. We recently launched a new national strategy to reduce suicide and self-harm providing an ambitious and evidence-based roadmap for the decade ahead. These developments are not isolated achievements. They are part of a broader programme of reform and investment across mental health services. While challenges remain and there is more work to do, these achievements show that sustained investment, evidence-based policy and strong partnerships are making a real difference to people's lives. I am pleased to confirm that in budget 2027, I have secured an additional €108 million for mental health services bringing annual funding to more than €1.65 billion. That represents a 7% increase in funding this year. Since I took up this office, funding for mental health services has increased by more than 61%. Budget 2027 builds on that sustained, incremental and ring-fenced recurring investment. It is not a one-off increase but another step in the sustained development of our mental health services. The allocation provides for staffing growth equivalent to 285 additional posts and specific new investment in priority services and programmes. It is not acceptable to me that ring-fenced posts for mental health funded in budget 2026 or budget 2027 would be delayed or suppressed by overspends elsewhere in the health service. I will be working with the Minister for Health to ensure there is very tight control of both these new 280 posts and posts funded for this year. We will be clawing back the funding not spent on the 300 ring-fenced posts for this year combining it with the additional funding for this year, holding it centrally nationally and only distributing it to regions as posts are actually filled. Over the past six years, I have focused investment on improving child and youth mental health services, building our national clinical programmes and developing more effective and compassionate supports for people experiencing a mental health crisis. This year, I am renewing that focus on crisis care while strengthening early intervention and talk therapies. The objective is straightforward, namely, effective help available earlier and closer to home. We have services that are working and that I want to extend while also addressing areas where we know further improvement is needed. One of the central priorities of budget 2027 is strengthening our response to people experiencing a mental health crisis and reducing lives lost to suicide. Building on the crisis nursing teams I announced this year for all model 4 hospital emergency departments, crisis nursing teams will now be established in our busiest model 3 hospitals - Louth, Naas, Mayo, Sligo, Wexford and Connolly Hospital - providing crucial out-of-hours support to people presenting in crisis. However, hospital should not always be the first or only option. We are building new pathways and a network of community-based alternative supports for people in distress. In the community, budget 2027 will provide two new crisis resolution teams - one in Wexford and the other in north Tipperary - and six new drop-in Solace crisis cafés - Carlow, Louth, Wexford and north Tipperary and two more in Dublin - giving people experiencing a crisis an alternative to attending an emergency department. We already know that these cafés work. We have seen a reduction of between 14% and 18% in presentations to emergency departments wherever there is a café. We will also provide an additional 24 suicide crisis assessment nurses or SCAN nurses - 12 teams of two - to complete the roll-out to the eight remaining counties. This will make SCAN a truly nationwide programme. Travellers are a priority group under Connecting for Life, our national suicide and self-harm reduction strategy, and continue to face particular challenges in relation to mental health with a suicide rate seven times higher than that of the general population. Building on previous investment, I am providing a further €1 million package for Traveller-specific suicide prevention initiatives co-designed with the Traveller community. This brings our total annual investment in this area to €4 million for 2027. Early support can prevent difficulties from developing into a crisis. That is why budget 2027 also substantially expands access to talking therapies. We will fund 33,000 additional free counselling sessions through Community Therapy Ireland, family resource centres and HSE counselling in primary care. These additional sessions will have a particular focus on men, young people and the LGBTQ+ community. Children and young people are another major focus of budget 2027. We are significantly strengthening early intervention through four new Jigsaw youth mental health services - Kildare; Dún Laoghaire; Cavan-Monaghan, which has a hub and spoke approach; and the same in Sligo-Leitrim. These new locations will extend Jigsaw services to approximately 135,000 additional young people across six counties and increase national coverage from 75% to 90%. Within specialist services, we are providing 40 additional clinicians to establish a new ADHD pathway within CAMHS and increase capacity in mental health in intellectual disability services for children with complex needs. The focus here will be particularly on children who have been waiting longest for assessment and support. As Minister of State, I have consistently prioritised people who require specialist mental health care through steady investment in our national clinical programmes. Over that period, specialist provision has grown from a small number of teams into near-national networks. Budget 2027 takes the next step in that expansion. It provides for new specialist teams in adult eating disorders in Limerick, which will complete the roll-out of the teams for eating disorders bringing them to 17; in adult dual diagnosis in Tallaght; and in early intervention in psychosis in Donegal. It will also provide additional clinical capacity for adult mental health intellectual disability services, perinatal mental health services and adult ADHD services. A key priority has been strengthening the national forensic mental health service and expanding access to specialist forensic care at the Central Mental Hospital, CMH, in Portrane. In September, I was pleased to confirm that CMH had reached its full operational capacity of 130 beds, an increase of more than 40%. This was made possible by funding secured in budget 2025. This progress is now being built upon through the next phase of development. The new intensive care rehabilitation unit, ICRU, which is the first service of its kind in Ireland, will provide secure, longer-term care for people with the most complex mental health needs with a strong focus on rehabilitation and recovery. In budget 2026, I secured €2.8 million in additional ring-fenced funding to support the expansion of the national forensic mental health service enabling the phased opening of this important new service. Budget 2027 continues that commitment by providing a further €2.8 million to recruit additional staff and fully open the first ward of the intensive care rehabilitation unit with 15 beds. This additional capacity will help patients to move more effectively through different levels of care within the Central Mental Hospital, improving recovery pathways while also creating space for further admissions. We are also strengthening mental health engagement and recovery services through €1 million to recruit additional mental health peer support workers, family support workers, recovery co-ordinators and IPS co-ordinators, who support people experiencing mental health difficulties into employment. Recovery is about more than clinical treatment. It is about supporting people to live fulfilling lives in their own communities. While the new initiatives are important, budget 2027 must also protect the services people already rely upon. The budget therefore makes significant provision to maintain existing levels of mental health service in the face of wider cost and price pressures. This includes funding for pay and pay increases; essential maintenance; inflationary pressures; and €12 million in new placements in voluntary hospitals. That funding matters because protecting existing capacity is just as important as developing new services. In particular, we must continue to ensure access to highly specialised placements for people with complex needs. Taken together, this additional investment will be felt right across crisis care, CAMHS, youth mental health, counselling, suicide prevention, community mental health services, specialist clinical programmes and forensic mental health services. Budget 2027 gives us the highest mental health service budget in the history of the State, but ultimately what matters is what that funding delivers for people. I look forward to working with my Department and the HSE to translate these commitments into services through the HSE service plan for 2027.

To mark World Mental Health day, we have to recognise the people who are struggling, often very alone and very isolated; the people who are living with anxiety, depression and serious mental health illness; and the families who are often very worried about someone they love and are trying to find the right support. For too long, they have felt let down by the State. These difficulties affect people from every age and every background. They can affect relationships, education and employment and the ability to manage everyday life. Everyone in these Houses knows too well about those stories. We encourage people to speak up and ask for help. When they do, we must ensure support is available. I very much welcome the additional €108 million for mental health services in budget 2027. This 7% increase is substantial, is much-needed investment and demonstrates the Government is committed to improving mental healthcare. It will support an additional 285 clinicians, strengthen community services, expand crisis supports, and improve care for children and young people. I also welcome the increased provision of free counselling and investment into specialist services including eating disorders, ADHD and, in particular, the perinatal mental health supports we have been advocating for a long time. I very much welcome that. For County Louth, in particular, the allocation of €630,000 for two new services is very welcome. The allocation of €330,000 for a new Solace café will provide a free, welcoming space where people who are experiencing mental health distress can talk, receive peer support and be guided towards further care. As we all know, mental health crisis does not follow a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule. That is where the Solace cafés come in and are so valuable. It will save lives, as the Minister of State said, and will reduce the number of people presenting at accident and emergency departments seeking crisis help. Crisis need happens at night and weekends when people feel they have nowhere to turn. Solace cafés offer supports outside those normal working hours in a community setting. It is a safe space for someone who needs understanding, connection and immediate support. It will provide an appropriate alternative to a really busy emergency department that is under pressure. I also really welcome the €300,000 for a specialist crisis mental health nursing team in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. Everyone from County Louth will know we have been asking for this for a long time. This is a real relief for many of those who are suffering from mental health illnesses and their families. The work done by accident and emergency departments, suicide crisis assessment nurses and Solace cafés is so important. These services always provide different routes to help. I regularly meet families in my constituency office and around County Louth who feel left behind. These things do not have a huge budget, but they will be there now. People will be hired to provide local access, to develop clear pathways, to allow continuity of care and, most of all, to provide confidence that the service will be safe and responsive. I also welcome increased investment in Jigsaw. County Louth did not get it this year but I look forward to advocating and pushing for that next year. I will work with the Minister of State, the Department and Jigsaw to make sure County Louth gets a Jigsaw service in the coming years. This is not in the Minister of State’s immediate portfolio but I want to raise primary care and the psychology waiting list. I have spoken to the Minister of State on this regularly. Prevention is always cheaper and better than crisis care. There are 1,400 children in Louth and Meath on primary care waiting lists and 360 waiting over a year. A lot of work is done and there is a lot more to do.

Is mór agam é labhairt ar cheist na meabhairshláinte tráthnóna agus tréaslú leis an Aire Stáit, an Teachta de Buitléir, as an obair atá déanta aici ar an gceist seo. We all know that access to counselling and talk therapy at an early stage makes a significant difference in helping people to manage challenges before they meet crisis points. That is why I want to focus particularly on the work done by the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, in prioritising investment in community-based mental health supports and expanding access to counselling services across the country. Through the dedicated funding for talk therapies and the new partnerships with community organisations around the country and in my own constituency, which focus on groups that might be less likely to seek support, tangible progress is being made in ensuring mental healthcare is available when and where it is needed. We can see the impact of that investment. More than 8,200 men have engaged with services under the Minister of State’s men’s free counselling initiative, with over 24,000 counselling sessions delivered since the scheme was launched a year ago. At the same time, the partnership with Community Therapy Ireland is expanding access to counselling for new clients, with a particular focus on young people and young men and members of the LGBTQ+ community. These initiatives are seeking to reduce those barriers to encourage people to seek help earlier. I want to particularly mention Aspen Counselling in my own constituency, a low-cost counselling service provider in Lucan, which made a proactive outreach to people as part of this year’s Lucan Festival to educate them about the importance of mental well-being and the importance of building mental resilience. I particularly welcome the support announced this year and last year for the Beacon of Light counselling centre in my constituency, in Clondalkin. Through a partnership between the HSE and Community Therapy Ireland, Beacon of Light has received funding to expand access to professional counselling and psychotherapy services for the local community. This invaluable investment recognises the important role that such community organisations play in providing accessible, high-quality mental health supports that people are able to access close to home. We were delighted to welcome the Minister of State to Beacon of Light earlier this year where she saw the innovation and hard work at first hand. I am very proud to be a member of its board. I am also really happy to see support for the breakthrough programme that is led by Beacon of Light under the men’s free counselling initiative. This programme combines one-to-one counselling with structured sporting activity to engage men who might not otherwise come forward for support. By addressing issues like anxiety, depression, addiction, anger management and suicide risk, through both therapeutic and physical well-being approaches, it offers a practical and effective way of reaching those who can sometimes be hardest to engage. This has led to offshoots in our constituency. Keith Howell and Kenneth Egan in the Howellness Centre have put together an activation-to-relaxation programme to encourage young boys to learn how to manage their own emotions and their own mental health supports through structured sporting activity and through engagement with each other. That is a really important bridge to build those early skills and a key part of early intervention. Looking ahead, the €2.8 million in additional funding for talk therapy secured by the Minister of State in the budget will further strengthen these services and I very much welcome that. It will support an additional 33,000 counselling sessions each year across community providers, the men's counselling initiative and HSE services. This is a significant investment in prevention, early intervention and accessible care for key and important target groups and reflects a clear recognition that this support should be available in every community and people should be able to access help before difficulties escalate into crisis. This further builds on the Minister of State’s investment in youth mental health services. This year’s budget sees almost €4 million in additional funding for Jigsaw to establish new services in Kildare, Dún Laoghaire, Cavan-Monaghan and Sligo-Leitrim, bringing Jigsaw’s coverage up to almost 90% of the country and extending those mental health supports to an additional 135,000 young people. I particularly welcome the Minister of State's support for, and continued investment in, crisis and recovery support in the community, including the announcement of a new Solace café for Lucan. These cafés provide a free out-of-hours, non-clinical drop-in space and represent an important investment in mental health supports.

There are many constraints in fulfilling the role of Minister, including budgetary constraints. In this specific area, there are constraints around the availability of staff and particularly the skilled staff we need. Nobody can question the sincerity and the intent of the Minister of State in her eagerness to meet the challenges presented to her in this Department and I commend her on that. I commend the increased funding for mental health in this budget. Even though we have a health budget of €30 billion, such are the demands on the services that it is a constraint. I was delighted the Minister, Deputy Chambers, on the day of the budget, as the Minister of State did in her commentary today, referenced the additional resources we are providing to tackle mental health issues among the members of the Travelling community. The Minister of State mentioned the increased rate of probable or suspected suicide among the members of Travelling community as being seven times the rate of the general population. Evidence provided to us at the Joint Committee on Key Issues Affecting the Traveller Community indicated that the rate of suicide among Traveller women is 15 times higher than the general population. I also welcome one of the important things the Minister of State mentioned in her contribution. This again was in the evidence that we have received at the committee. One of the recommendations the committee made in its health report that was published earlier in the year is that increased funding should be provided for the delivery of peer-led Traveller-specific mental health supports. There is a mechanism already with the Traveller primary healthcare projects and we should look to those first in terms of that additional funding to use that resource. We got very positive feedback about that at the committee in terms of its impact on general health. That is the body we should look to now to try to make sure that we tackle Traveller mental health issues and the increasing prevalence of suicide among the Travelling community. With that money we should provide timely interventions in relation to poor mental health, provide appropriate interventions in the event of attempted suicide and provide supports to family members bereaved following a suicide within the community. When we were doing the report, it was very upsetting to find that Exchange House Ireland cited a lack of hope as one of the most significant drivers when it came to suicide among the Travelling community. Another significant risk factor for suicide is exposure to suicide. We really need to tackle this issue. We need to intervene and try to make sure that we can reduce the rate of suicide in society. In particular, we need to challenge that issue which is affecting so many Traveller families. I welcome that the Minister of State in her contribution said we are introducing a new ADHD pathway in CAMHS. She and I spoke previously on this. One of the CAMHS services in Dublin has a specific pathway for children who are referred for ADHD services. I have asked for that to be expanded across the country. Based on her contribution today, I very much hope that will be the case. In recent years we have also started to invest more in adult ADHD services, which is very welcome. However, if we can intervene earlier with CAMHS services for those children who have ADHD and provide the therapeutic and medical interventions, we would possibly not need the same capital expenditure in the future on ADHD services for adults. Early intervention with children will result in good outcomes for those children as they progress into adulthood. I hope the Minister of State might look at and bring greater attention to the relationship between addiction and mental health, and the need for addiction services to be treated as an integral part of our mental health system.

I welcome today's statements ahead of World Mental Health Day this weekend. I acknowledge everyone who is struggling with their mental health, be that quietly or in crisis. I want them to know that they are not alone. I want to also remember those who have lost their lives to suicide and every family left carrying that grief. We stand with them and they are in our thoughts today. I also thank the professionals, advocates and volunteers who support people day in and day out, often working under enormous pressure. This Government has plenty of strategies but does not have plenty of staffing, investment and resources to turn those strategies into functioning services. A strategy does not see a child. A policy does not answer a phone. Another announcement will not help somebody sitting today waiting for an appointment. Across the State countless people are waiting for assessments, treatments, referrals and inpatient beds. They are waiting on CAMHS lists, in homeless shelters and far too often in prison cells. People are resorting to chaotic emergency departments because they have nowhere else to turn. Children often wait for years for CAMHS appointments. Families of children with intellectual disabilities, autism and ADHD and who have had mental health difficulties are being passed between services like pass the parcel. Many families are forced to seek support for eating disorder treatment abroad because appropriate services are not available here. These are consequences of a system that is stretched beyond its capacity. Sharing the Vision was launched in 2020, with 100 recommendations intended to transform mental health services. Six years later, multidisciplinary teams remain understaffed, recruitment and retention problems persist and key commitments are still undelivered. Just five of 25 promised early intervention psychosis teams are functioning and in place. Specialist perinatal services remain incomplete and the dedicated mother and baby unit has still not been delivered. Psychiatric consultant posts remain vacant for more than a year alongside serious shortages in psychology, occupational therapy, social work and community psychiatric nursing. We cannot deliver a modern mental health service with permanently understaffed teams. Let us consider children and young people. There are 4,800 children waiting on CAMHS nationally, with 673 of them waiting for more than a year. The families of those children struggle to manage. Schools are trying to provide supports they are not equipped to deliver and GPs are sending referrals into an abyss. In County Kerry, families affected by the CAMHS scandal received apologies yet some remain excluded from that compensation scheme without adequate explanation and face having to pursue justice through the courts. Almost a decade after the national model of care was launched, only 11 of the promised 16 regional eating disorder teams are operational. Eating disorders now account for almost 30% of child psychiatric inpatient admissions compared with 18% to five years ago. We know that early intervention improves outcomes yet families are still fighting for access to treatments and some have no option but to seek care outside the State. Adults are waiting for up to two years for ADHD assessments if they can even get one. Others face extraordinary delays in psychological services. One response I got to a parliamentary question highlighted a wait of 13 years for a psychology appointment. We continue to see people with serious mental illnesses ending up in prison when what they need is proper psychiatric care. Without investment and workforce planning, the promise of reform remains exactly that - a promise. For us in Sinn Féin the principles are straightforward. People should receive the right care at the right time in the right place delivered by properly resourced professionals. Mental health should be treated with the same urgency as physical health. Someone experiencing a mental health crisis should not have to go to an overcrowded accident and emergency department. We need universal counselling in primary care, integrated child and youth mental health services up to the age of 25, specialist eating disorder services and crucially that multi-annual workforce plan, expanding training places and improving recruitment and retention because there is absolutely no point in promising a new service without a credible plan for the people needed to deliver it. That brings me to budget 2027. Every cent spent improving mental health services is welcome, whether its crisis intervention talk therapy, eating disorder treatment or suicide prevention, investment is necessary and is long overdue. My question to the Minister of State is: how much of that €108 million is genuinely new funding? How much of it is required simply to maintain existing services and meet rising costs? When I read the budget commitments, I saw phrases like "expand", "continue to establish" and "further increase" but I did not see sufficiently clear targets, delivery dates or workforce commitments. Six new Solace cafés, community crisis resolution teams and SCAN, suicide crisis assessment nurse, teams can make a tremendous difference to people's lives. However, who will staff them? When will they open? How many posts are funded and how many can actually be filled? Last year Government promised 300 additional mental health staff and another 285 this year. How many of last year's posts are filled and actually providing care today? Yesterday and today in this House the Minister of State spoke about clawing back the funding not spent on those 300 ring-fenced posts. How many exactly are in place? There was also a commitment to a crisis resolution service for Tullamore-Westmeath. Where is that service now? Is it fully staffed, operational and accessible to people who need it? Where is the provision for people presenting in crisis in the midlands? Where is the equivalent access for patients across the centre of the country? People in my constituency pay the same taxes as everybody else. They are entitled to the same level of services. The new pathway for ADHD in CAMHS is welcome, as is additional provision for children with an intellectual disability, but families do not need pathways to only exist on paper; they need assessments, clinicians and treatment. Today is an opportunity to speak about those real voices and the real change needed, but it is also an opportunity to speak about the actual services not being there for people. We cannot continue along this line of repeated announcements and press releases - not when it comes to mental health and not when we know the outcome of failing to have a service that actually meets somebody's need.

It has been a while since I had the opportunity to speak to the Minister of State directly on mental health. I acknowledge the work she has done on progressing the Mental Health Act. It could have been better in some respects but it is a lot better than what was there beforehand. I acknowledge that it is a step forward. I spoke to Deputy Clarke before this debate. I could have gone back to a speech I gave five years ago and regurgitated it, and said the same things with different statistics. The waiting list for CAMHS continues to rise. When the Minister of State took over responsibility for mental health, 2,115 children were waiting for an appointment with CAMHS. As we speak, that waiting list is 4,881 children. That is an increase of 130% on her watch. What makes it even worse is the number of children waiting for more than a year for an appointment. When the Minister of State came into office in 2020, there were 223 children waiting more than a year for an appointment. That now stands at 643 children. That is an increase of 188% in the number of children waiting for mental health supports for more than a year. Having one child waiting for more than a year for mental health supports is an absolute scandal but 643 should be a national scandal, and there should be more noise around it. In 2020, when the previous Government was formed, there were only three public adult eating disorder beds in the State. Fast forward six years and we still have only three eating disorder beds. This is a dereliction of duty, leaving vulnerable people with the most fatal of mental health problems feeling abandoned. We still have a situation where children are admitted to adult psychiatric wards, and we do not have proper access to 24-7 emergency mental health care. An accident and emergency department is not the right place for somebody who is suffering from bad mental health unless adequate resources are in place. Earlier this year, Sinn Féin proposed a Bill that would provide for 24-7 mental health emergency rooms in every single major hospital, separate from accident and emergency departments. One of the biggest gaps in mental health care has not been filled, which is the lack of beds for mothers who are experiencing mental health problems after the birth of a child. As it stands, if a mother needs to be admitted to a mental health care facility for her mental health after she gives birth, she is separated from her child. That is just wrong. I welcome the announcement that Lucan will get a mental health café. As the Minister of State knows, this is something I have campaigned for a long time, not just in Lucan but throughout the State, particularly for people with suicidal ideation. I have some questions that I want to tease it out. I will submit a parliamentary question in relation to this. Where exactly will the café be located? Can people self-refer or walk in without an appointment? Will the service be able to refer people to more acute services, if needed? Will the service be open 24-7? As we know, mental health problems do not just arise between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. They can happen any time. It would be remiss of me not to talk about the impact of the budget on people's mental health. The Government is actually gaslighting people. It is gaslighting students. It says there will be a reduction of €150 in student fees but student fees will cost €350 more next year than they were last year. This is gaslighting. Government is gaslighting people getting the fuel allowance by saying they will get more this year, when it has cut back on the number of weeks the scheme is open, meaning they will get less. This is gaslighting. It says that single people will be €750 better off next year when 1.5 million ordinary workers will be only €200 better off. That is a measly fiver a week during a cost-of-living crisis. That is gaslighting. It is probably the only gas being lit this year because of the increase in prices. Ordinary workers and families will not forget this.

We should all consider, as Deputy Clarke referenced, the families and individuals who suffered with mental health issues over many years who did not always get the support they should have. We all think of those in our families and beyond whose circumstances finished very tragically, with lifelong impact for surviving family members. It is incumbent on us to deliver as much as possible as regards mental health. It is very hard, while we are talking about CAMHS and young people in need of support, not to bring up the fact that at the end of July, there were 4,800 on the list in counties Louth and Meath, of which 162 are on the list more than a year. That is not good enough. We have all dealt with silo issues where a child needed some element of service and they were ping-ponged between the CDNT or primary care and CAMHS in particular. While I have seen some steps being taken towards improving that, we need to ensure it does not happen in any way, shape or form. The last time the Minister of State and I spoke in the House was in relation to emergency situations and circumstances. I have had a fair amount of correspondence regarding some of these cases and I do not want to go into specifics other than to say we have seen too many cases where somebody needs help and support and it is very difficult to get it for them, particularly in scenarios where they do not accept they need it. I accept people need certain protections but we need to find a better way. The Minister of State's intention is to deliver. We see that through the greater level of authorised officers. I ask that we look at the means by which authorised officers deal with somebody in absolute distress who may not technically be an imminent danger to themselves or others. We can all make arguments that they are a danger to themselves and others and can impact greatly not only on themselves but the wider community, and put themselves in very dangerous circumstances where they have made themselves homeless. I have witnessed the local authority, gardaí, and mental health services unable or failing to deliver in a number of these circumstances, and that is even with people looking at the most novel of solutions. We really need to look at something better. As Deputy Clarke said, we all want to see SCAN teams. I welcome the fact of talk of this and the Solace café in County Louth. We just need to see delivery on it. No different from Deputy Ward, we have an issue of people coming under severe pressure when we talk about the fact that an insufficient amount has been done in the budget on electricity, fuel, and home heating oil. The bare minimum has been done. When we look at the disability payment, while we welcome its inclusion, it is not enough. It is €10 a week.

I welcome these statements. It is an important issue. Like others, I acknowledge those who struggle with their mental health, along with those who have lost their lives, the families of those people, and everybody who has been impacted. I also thank everybody who works in the area, including the mental health staff, volunteers, advocates, champions and caregivers throughout the country. I count the Minister of State among those champions as she has championed this area and is very passionate about it. She has inherited historic underinvestment. It is an uphill battle. There are real struggles for people as a result. There are other champions across the Oireachtas within the health committee - Deputy Clarke and others who are constantly raising these issues as well. That work is important. There is a lot to do. These are really important services and supports that need investment. It is welcome that the theme for World Mental Health Day is "Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change". That is really important. It is also important that the Minister of State recognises that within our policymaking we must bring real voices and real people into the discussion. I was sharply criticised by the senior Minister yesterday for quoting newspaper articles, but they related to real people, real stories and real lives. They are ones that I will always bring in here and bring into the discussion. They impact me greatly in terms of listening to people's real experiences. Some of the most impactful stories in terms of mental health I have heard were in audiovisual room briefings we have had in Leinster House. We heard from families and people with eating disorders and parents who have lost children and their harrowing experiences of trying to access services and having to go abroad. These are real struggles. Similarly, constituents who came to my clinic have told me about gaps in services and family members falling between the cracks with devastating consequences. When we encourage people to seek help, the help needs to be there, and we need to ensure that the services and supports are there. I welcome the increased investment in the budget, but this must materialise into improved services and jobs in services across the country. The level of investment has to increase and continue to increase. Mental Health Reform estimates that 6% of the overall health budget goes to mental health and we need to get to about 10%. We need to see continued and sustained investment to tackle many of the issues we mentioned in the debate. In particular I welcome the additional 33,000 counselling hours. That is really important. There are targets for men, younger people and the LGBT community. That is also very welcome. I further welcome the increased investment in Traveller mental health funding. Deputy Connolly put it really well in terms of the evidence that we have heard at the Oireachtas Traveller committee about the scale of need from the organisations and the much higher levels of suicide within that community and the need to invest in it. I will not repeat what he said but he put it quite well. I do have questions on it though, and the Minister of State might pick up on them in her replies about how the additional funding will be spent. Will it be through the HSE or will it go into the primary health for Traveller projects?

Through Traveller projects.

That will be welcomed by the Traveller organisations. I am also keen to know when the Traveller mental health action plan will be finalised and published, because we have the increased investment and it must align with our plans, policies and strategies. That is an important area that needs to see greater investment overall. Another issue I would like to pick up on is the mother and baby units. This is really important. It was reported in thejournal.ie that a mother and baby unit was confirmed for St. Vincent's, but that it is years from opening. We know this was recommended almost a decade ago and is a really important service for mothers and babies. I read a piece by Dr. Suzanne Crowe who said separating mothers with mental illness from their babies just causes more suffering. We have to listen to that. There is an urgency in this regard because we know from the statistics that there are real issues and a significant number of people are impacted. One in five pregnant women will have a mental health problem in pregnancy or in the first year. Five in 100 will have a significant mental health illness and three in 1,000 will need admission to hospital so we need to have that service for people where they can be kept together in order that we do not increase the suffering for people. There are 20 units in the UK but there are none here, which leads to increased distress. Under Sharing the Vision, it was said that we would have it by quarter 4 of 2024. There have been significant delays for this service, which has been sought for a long time. It is welcome that there is progress but there is an urgency to providing it. I would welcome anything the Minister of State can do to progress that and ensure it is delivered for mothers and babies. That is a really important service and one that must be prioritised. I would also like to talk about prisoners. This time last year I visited Cork Prison. I was really concerned about the health conditions and in particular the conditions of people with mental illness being held in the prison. At the end of January, 38 people were being held in prison awaiting transfer to the Central Mental Hospital. The average wait time at that point was seven months. People who were suffering severe mental health illness were being held in unsuitable conditions in prisons, awaiting transfer. That is really concerning. The governor was quite concerned and I was concerned by what I saw. Too often we forget about prisoners and people held in prison. It is welcome that the Central Mental Hospital is at full operational capacity but I wonder whether that is enough. A report was done about progress in the penal system in 2025 by the Irish Penal Reform Trust. It said that the previous full analysis of the prison population was done by the National Forensic Mental Health Service in 2003. It was estimated that 122 to 127 extra secure psychiatric beds would be needed. At that time the prison population was much smaller. Now we have a prison population of 5,700 while at the time it was just under 3,000. The Central Mental Hospital has 130 beds. I have questions about the capacity and whether we need to go further. It would be worth looking at the report from Mental Health Reform in that regard. It talks about the rate of transfer as well. Since 2023, despite the increase in population, there has been an annual decrease in the number of transfers from prison to the Central Mental Hospital. In 2025, there were 31 transfers from prison, 35 in 2024 and 41 in 2023. The reason for the decrease in the number of transfers is due to the unavailability of beds and beds being blocked due to a lack of step-down facilities. The report also notes that the intensive care rehab units adjacent to the Central Mental Hospital, serving as a step-down facility and designed to provide long-term rehabilitation for individuals, will no longer require the level of care provided in the Central Mental Hospital, but it states that in 2020 under Sharing the Vision, intensive care rehab units were recommended for the south and west of the country, but no timeline has since been provided as to when they will be delivered. That is one that we have to remember. Saoirse Brady put it quite well when she said that behind the stats are people, many of whom are living in inhumane and degrading conditions. Last year, 377 prisoners were sharing cells. It is no place to be held, in particular for those who are quite unwell. It is one that we need to continue to look at as well as to look at the capacity. I am interested in the Minister of State's thoughts, and those of her Department on that. It is one I can follow up with a parliamentary question as well to get the detail on it. I have concerns about people who fall through the cracks. I spoke to a constituent of mine who felt his brother had fallen through the cracks between the GP, the accident and emergency department and the outpatient department. There is a need for better communication between the different services to ensure that people do not fall through the cracks and that there are not the devastating consequences that family and others had. That piece needs to be teased through a bit more. The health committee looked at it from the perspective of accident and emergency units and admissions but there is more work to be done. I want to just touch on LGBTQ issues. The increase in counselling hours is welcome. I am interested to know how they will be broken down and how people will access them. A lot of people in the LGBT community access services through LGBT organisations as a first port of call. People might feel more comfortable going to dedicated services. We need to fund and resource those because the stats from being LGBT in Ireland are really alarming in that 52% had self-harmed, 64% reported suicidal thoughts and 26% had a suicide attempt. We need to resource the services on the front line. Very often they are the smaller community organisations, and not just those in Dublin but around the country as well where they exist. I read the implementation plan for Connecting for Life. Like Deputy Ó Murchú said, there are concerns about very vulnerable people and how the State supports them. We need more wraparound supports and inter-agency working. There is a number of them in Cork city as well. I will follow up on the issue at another time.

I welcome these statements ahead of World Mental Health Day this Saturday. This year's theme is "Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change". The people who use our mental health services are best placed to tell us what works and what is not working and what needs to improve. This year's theme is extremely apt. I commend the Minister of State on securing a record allocation of funding. Budget 2027 provides €1.657 billion for mental health services. That is an increase of €108 million. It is the seventh increase in a row. Funding is now more than 60% higher than it was in 2020. The budget funds 285 additional clinicians next year on top of the 300 posts funded this year. I also welcome the Minister of State’s assurance that these posts will be protected from wider pressures on the health service. That is a record of delivery, and the Minister of State deserves great credit for it, especially given the challenges that exist in securing funding. Of course, the budget is only as good as the services it pays for and delivers upon. In Dún Laoghaire, people know their mental health services by name and, indeed, by place. They know Cluain Mhuire, for example, in Blackrock, where the community teams care for adults across an area of 180,000 people. They know the Lucena Clinic in Dún Laoghaire, where the CAMHS teams support children and teenagers in their most difficult times. They also know the Solace café in Blackrock, run by Aware, where any adult in distress can sit down in the evening with someone who will listen, free of charge. Dún Laoghaire is home to Mental Health Ireland, which marks its 60th year this year. I thank the nurses, doctors, psychologists, social workers and therapists in those service and others, along with the peer workers and volunteers who staff and run them. Their work is hard, it is skilled and it changes lives. The Minister of State is right to put crisis care first. An emergency department is rarely the right place for a person in mental distress. Solace cafés are already reducing emergency department presentations. This budget will bring the number of cafés to 15 by the end of next year, and it will also bring the vital SCAN services to every county for the first time. Early intervention matters just as much. Cluain Mhuire provides early intervention in psychosis. Across the national programme last year, the average time a person went untreated fell from 16 weeks to five. Seven in ten people achieved recovery. The same is true for our young people. Referrals to CAMHS have risen by 70% since 2020. That is shocking, but it shows that despite the surge of urgent referrals, 97% are responded to within three days. The commitment is that no child will wait longer than 12 months for a first appointment by the end of this year. I ask the Minister of State to hold the HSE to that. I am delighted that, with the funding that has been provided, a new Jigsaw will open in Dún Laoghaire. That is four new centres to assist and work with young people between the ages of 12 and 25. The Government is investing €16 million a year in the service. The budget funds new additional Jigsaw services, meaning additional coverage now as well as the existing ones in Bray, Tallaght and Dublin city centre, and each service covers its respective area. My first request of the Minister of State is that she and her officials continue to engage with the parents from CARED Ireland as well as the board of Kyrie Farm. She has had strong engagement to date. I ask for that engagement to continue. My second request relates to the Solace café in Blackrock. It opens just four evenings a week from Thursday to Sunday and it does fantastic work, but as we all know, distress does not keep to a schedule. I ask the Minister of State to work with the HSE and Aware to see if we can extend that to seven evenings a week. To anyone listening who is struggling today, help is there. Support is there from their GP, but also from the Samaritans or through the text helpline of HELLO to 50808. I especially welcome the additional funding and services for men's mental health, counselling hours and the additional services, as well as funding. I thank the Minister of State, her officials, all the clinical staff and everyone who works in the mental health sector for their vital work.

Three short words, "I need help". For the person saying them, it might have taken weeks or, indeed, months to find the courage to do so. Before those words, there may have been sleepless nights, panic attacks, anxieties, appointments made and cancelled or a phone held in their hand wondering who to call. When those words finally come, our response matters. Last year in this Chamber, I spoke about people arriving in emergency departments in acute mental health distress. I recall asking for dedicated, dignified crisis pathways with trained staff, appropriate spaces and timely access to care. Since last year, one might ask what has changed. As my party's spokesperson on mental health, I welcome the commitments made over the past year and in budget 2027, including the allocation of 300 additional mental health posts for 2026, investment in early intervention and talking therapies, and the new child and youth mental health action plan. There is also the additional €108 million in ring-fenced recurring funding in the budget for mental health next year. I acknowledge and thank the Minister of State, the HSE and the NGO partners for their work in this regard. I also recognise the positive impact that the SCAN teams have had in Galway. The development of dedicated crisis response services is exactly the type of intervention that many of us have been calling for. It is providing people in acute mental distress with a more appropriate and compassionate pathway to care. However, an allocation must be professionally available to see someone and a plan that becomes a clear route for help. As public representatives, we hear about the strain on families, such as the parent trying to find support for a child, the partner worried about leaving someone alone and the person who asked for help and is still waiting. For many, a waiting list can be a daily challenge. It can mean checking their phone and watching for changes in someone they love and wondering what to do if things progress. As policymakers, we must do more than listen. Mental health is always visible. Someone can get to work, they can collect their children, they can stand on the sideline of a match and still be struggling deeply. We need to make it easier to seek help early before distress becomes a real crisis. We know the scale of that challenge among young people. Recent research from the Shona Project found that 41% of teenagers surveyed reported poor well-being and 62% experienced school and exam pressure often or, indeed, always. Almost 40% reported stress and mental health challenges. These figures should concern us all. We also know what helps. Young people with higher levels of well-being are more likely to be involved in sport, community activities and positive social connections. That is why mental health policy cannot exist in isolation. This must be reflected in our schools, sporting clubs, youth services and communities. People should have access to counselling, appropriate assessment and continuing support without having to prove that they have reached breaking point. We must also respond to mental health and addiction together. For some people, alcohol and drugs become a way of coping with distress and deepening the difficulties that exist. They deserve treatment that understands both. They deserve a pathway to recovery with support that continues beyond the immediate crisis. Recovery is possible. Our services must help make that possibility reachable. For people with disabilities, it means mental health care that responds to individual needs, with services working together. For someone in crisis, it means a safe, compassionate response in an hour. I hope that there is hope, and there is hope in this debate. I acknowledge those providing care under considerable pressure. The staff, carers and volunteers need the resources and support. I welcome the expansion of CAMHS and the SCAN teams across our country. People recover. Lives are rebuilt. With the right support, someone can imagine a future today and they can see a very bright future. That is why access matters. That is why early intervention matters. That is why we must follow through. We ask people to find the courage to speak; we must find the resolve to respond. Last year, I said that access saved lives. This year, our responsibility is to show what we have done to make that access a reality. For a person who in crisis, what is the roadmap for them if they are asking themselves where they go, who do they tell and if support is available when they need it? If a person finds the courage to say, "I need help", what is the roadmap that follows? Where do they go and who responds? Can they access the support they need when they need it on a face-to-face basis?

The Government's track record on mental health has been dismal. There have been plenty of grand announcements and countless strategies and recommendations, but action has moved far too slowly. Mental healthcare should be accessible, like any other emergency or essential service. I come from a rural community in south Kilkenny, so it is important to me that I address how this crisis is impacting rural Ireland in particular. Last year, research from University College Dublin showed just how real depression among farmers had become. The study offered a glimpse into the poor mental health, depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide that so many farmers are battling. It found that almost 23% of Irish farmers were at risk of suicide. Farm stress, financial pressure and isolation are daily realities of thousands of people across this country. With the increasingly extreme weather farmers are facing, fodder shortages and an uncertain future, I worry that these numbers are only rising. The Government has stripped over €60 million from the Department of agriculture. That is an interesting approach to supporting struggling Irish farmers. It has left thousands of people, who are in desperate need of help, languishing on waiting lists for time out of mind. We have a chronic shortage of mental health professionals in rural areas. We have communities where local GPs are the only point of contact and even that service is under threat as people struggle to get an appointment. We have a Government that announces funding but cannot fill the posts it already has. It talks about increasing investment, but it refuses to address the structural failures. It announced increased investments yet provides no details on the breakdown. How are people to expect progress if the Government cannot even provide the details? We need to see delivery of trained professionals in communities right across the State, urban and rural. We cannot allow the Government to normalise such extreme waiting lists for urgent care. Nearly 5,000 children across the State are on a waiting list for CAMHS, a number that has continued to rise. This is utterly unacceptable. Early intervention is crucial. Delays allow difficulties to escalate and place additional pressures on families, schools, GPs and the wider community. I want to give a shout out to Grow Mental Health in Kilkenny. It is having a concert on Saturday on World Mental Health Day. Paul Byrom and the Cois Nore Choir are playing in St. Canice's Cathedral, so this is a major fundraiser for the organisation. It does exceptional work.

I very much welcome the statements today to mark World Mental Health Day. I also welcome the budget and, as others have acknowledged, the Minister of State's own deep commitment to her portfolio and to delivering within it. I welcome what has been in the budget in terms of standardising what are some really good initiatives. The biggest issue in mental health is that we have such a patchwork of what exists across the country. It is about making sure that they are standardised with regards to SCAN and crisis resolution teams. I welcome the Solace café for the north inner city. However, the Minister of State will have some job on delivering on all of this. She has already alluded to it. We are now seeing the introduction of multi-annual funding to the health service, but not in a good way. Basically, this year's allocation will have to be clawed back from next year, and that is not good. We are already seeing on the ground that community care - the low-hanging fruit - is the first casualty of cutbacks. I have a real fear that mental health supports will also be a casualty. In the few minutes that I have, I will address a number of glaring gaps. First, while there are a significant number of supports out there for when people find themselves in mental health distress, the signposting is not always as clear as it needs to be. We know that the relationship between primary care and Jigsaw needs to be stronger in some counties. I want to talk about the role of GPs. It is extraordinary in some ways that we have a fantastic chronic disease management programme now in place but mental health is not part of that. It needs to be because, by and large, mental health therapy is only accessed through private services. We need to change that, particularly when we look at the length of waiting services. There are psychology waiting lists of 3,000 adults and probably over 30,000 children now. I have GPs in parts of this city who tell me that they will not refer to CAMHS. That is a shocking indictment. It is not because they are abandoning their patients. Rather, it is because they have no faith that the children they are referring will be seen any time soon. I will make a plea to the Minister of State. The GP contract has to be renewed next year. Once we finally see the strategic review of GP care, whenever we will see that - we would welcome that sooner rather than later - I call on the Minister of State to ensure that mental health management is part of the chronic disease management programme. The second key factor relates to hospitals. The major development, which we certainly welcome, is that of advanced nurse practitioners, ANPs, being on-site within our emergency departments to a much greater extent, but it is still not on a 24-hour basis. From the hours of 2 a.m. to 8 a.m., there is no presence there. Everything we know about mental health, particularly suicidal ideation, shows that people are presenting during those very dark hours. We need to change the coverage. We also need to make sure that the ANPs are rolled out to model 3 hospitals. Regarding perinatal mental health, I welcome what the Minister of State is saying but there are three glaring gaps for me. First, the national maternity strategy is over a decade old at this stage. There were clear recommendations on a two- and four-month check for physical health but also mental health. That needs to be put in place. Second, we know that there is no weekend perinatal mental health service in this country. One of the hubs does a half day on Fridays. Of the 13 spokes, two do not have any perinatal mental health midwife in place and four are on a four-day service. That is simply unacceptable. The last thing is-----

Yes, so I am going to finish up very quickly. I was very proud to be a part of the Oireachtas committee on drug use reform in this country. There are 11 specific recommendations that mention mental health. There is a Minister of State with responsibility for drugs but we need the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, to champion and drive a lot of those recommendations because mental illness drives addiction and also prevents interaction with addiction services. We need her to step up and ensure that that strategy is fully delivered.

At the outset, I thank the Minister of State. Her announcement yesterday for a new crisis resolution team and Solace café for Wexford was most welcome. I spoke to her a number of times about this and she gave a commitment to me that she would do this. She has honoured that commitment, so I thank her on behalf of the people of Wexford for this much-needed service. Notwithstanding her commitment and work in this area, mental health has been treated as the poor relation of our health service for far too long, an afterthought rather than a core pilar of public care. This is not a criticism of any single Government or Minister; this has been generational. The truth is more uncomfortable. We, as a nation, have allowed mental health services to fester and wither over many generations. From CDNTs, the start of many young people's mental health journey, to CAMHS, to adult mental health services, the pattern is unmistakable. We identify a need, we acknowledge urgency and we publish strategies, yet the system remains structurally incapable of delivering timely, meaningful intervention. Families wait months, then years, and in some cases, entire childhoods pass before a child receives the support they have been assessed as needing. CDNTs were established to provide multidisciplinary care for children with complex needs. Instead, many teams are operating with chronic vacancies, multi-year waiting lists and caseloads that no staff cohort could realistically manage. CAMHS, intended as the specialist backbone of youth mental health, is utterly overstretched, and when young people become adults, they often transition into services that are equally under-resourced, fragmented and struggling to meet demand. We have consistently treated mental health as secondary, as something that can be deferred until next year's budget or the next reform cycle. The consequences of that neglect are visible in every community in this country. In February I raised a parliamentary question that illustrates the scale of the problem in my constituency of Wexford. The position of head psychologist in Wexford primary care psychology service for children and adolescents has been vacant since September 2025. As a direct result, the waiting list for this service now stands at three years - three years for a child to access primary care psychology, a service intended to provide early intervention. This is the reality families - real children and real parents - are living with, and the consequences are even more real. I do not have to explain that to the Minister of State. If Ireland is serious about mental health, we must finally treat it as an equal to physical health in funding, staffing, urgency and accountability. Anything less is simply repeating the mistakes of the past. From my personal experience, I was involved in the establishment of a group called Wexford MarineWatch. We received great assistance from Waterford Marine Search and Rescue. People in the community came together because of the scourge of suicide in Wexford town and the Wexford Harbour area. People decided they were going to take it into their own hands. Our volunteers patrol the harbour and bridge area and we have almost eradicated the scourge of suicide in the Wexford Harbour and bridge area. It is not just because people are walking there; the signal has been sent out that there is a community who care and who hold out the hand to people who are in crisis and in distress. What I am saying to the Minister of State by illustrating that is that if people have hope, if people have a realisation that there is something there for them, that means as much to them as the direct intervention itself. The hopelessness that is often there compounds the difficulty that people are encountering. I thank the Minister of State for her intervention with the crisis resolution team for Wexford and the Solace café. As she knows, we were bereft of any acute unit. Many people from Wexford, a county with a population heading for 180,000, were sent to Waterford, to a facility that is under severe pressure itself. While the developments are most welcome, I would like to see the Minister of State follow through on that with commitments to opening services, details as to where they will open and a commitment that the funding is definitely in place. We have been waiting so long, as she knows. In fairness, she has been very hands-on on this, and I applaud her for that. The people of Wexford will benefit from something they have for many years been crying out for. I wish the Minister of State well on a difficult journey. I know that her thoughts are in very much the right place in this area and that the commitment she has given she will follow through on. We will work together to ensure that people in my area, her area and around Ireland are better served by the mental health services.

As we approach World Mental Health Day this Saturday, I want to take the opportunity to speak about this very important issue that affects every community in this country, mental health. World Mental Health Day is an important opportunity to raise awareness but it should also be an opportunity to recognise the people working every day to support those who are struggling and to acknowledge there is still more to do. This year's World Health Organization theme is "Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change". That is particularly important. We need to listen to people who have experienced mental health difficulties, their families and carers, and the communities and make sure their experiences help shape the services we provide. I welcome the significant investment in mental health announced in budget 2027. An additional €108 million will be provided for mental health services next year, bringing the total allocation to €1.657 billion. There will also be funding for an additional 285 mental health clinicians. Importantly, there is a further €10 million for crisis supports and suicide prevention, including the roll-out of suicide crisis assessment nurse, SCAN, teams in every county. That is particularly significant because when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, the response has to be there when they need it, not days or weeks later. In particular, I acknowledge the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, for the work she has done in securing this investment and for the focus she has placed on expanding community-based mental health and crisis services. We have seen mental health funding increase substantially over recent years, and this further investment represents an important continuation of that work. While we welcome additional funding and additional staff, we also have to recognise the reality on the ground. Kerry, like every other county, has been affected by suicide. Every life lost leaves behind parents, children, siblings, friends, colleagues and communities who have to deal with what is an unimaginable loss. My youngest brother took his own life a couple of days short of his 21st birthday. We have sadly seen far too many suicides in County Kerry, and indeed throughout the country. That is why suicide prevention cannot be simply something we talk about in September and October; it has to be something we continue to work on throughout the year. There is some excellent work taking place at community level in my county. I particularly welcome a series of mental health and suicide prevention events that are taking place across the county this autumn. The organisers have secured €2,000 in support from the HSE through Donagh Hennebry, the HSE South West suicide prevention officer, helping to facilitate venues and refreshments at the various events. These are exactly the types of initiatives we need to see, bringing people together locally, creating an opportunity to have difficult conversations and making people aware of the support that is available. We also have the Kerry GAA health and well-being committee hosting a series of workshops across the county this month. Events are taking place in the Kerry Coast Inn in Cahersiveen, the Michael J. Quill Centre in Kilgarvan, the Listowel Arms Hotel in Listowel, the Rose Hotel in Tralee, the Skellig Hotel in Dingle and the Heights Hotel in Killarney, bringing conversations about health and well-being directly into communities. They cover many issues, including HSE supports, health and well-being, inclusivity and substance abuse. They cover other issues such as money muelling, financial safety, etc., and Movember Ahead of the Game mental fitness programme. That is a really positive initiative because our GAA clubs are at the heart of so many communities in Kerry. They are places where people meet, where friendships are formed and where people often notice when somebody is not quite themselves. Sometimes the most important thing we can do is simply to ask someone how they are and to genuinely listen to the answers they give. The workshops are open to all sporting organisations, schools, etc. Everyone is welcome. I thank Matt O'Neill, the Kerry county board health and well-being officer and Patrick O'Sullivan, the chairman of the Kerry county board. When I contacted him he was very open and welcoming. They are doing great work. I give a big shout-out to Radio Kerry as well. There is also the wider Kerry Mental Health and Wellbeing Fest, which has become an important annual fixture across the county, with community organisations, the HSE, Kerry County Council and others working together to promote positive mental health and suicide prevention.

I acknowledge the amount of work the Minister of State has done in this area. I know it is an area which is close to her heart and in which she has made an awful lot of progress. We should acknowledge that. As we talk about mental health, we know the stresses, the strains and the shortcomings of the system that affect people across the scale. I will particularly talk about young people. In my office today we have been talking about this issue. I have a young American intern working with me at the moment, Maeve Klement, and she has given me quite a lot of insight. She has done a lot of research, for which she deserves a credit in what I am going to say. One of the things that strikes me from that conversation is that we often talk about how much stress and strain there is in life but for young people it is amplified all the more, and there is not necessarily readily accessible to them the tools they need to deal with it. That creates a pressure all of its own. At the moment there is a huge problem as well in relation to access to mental health support generally. We know about the growing pressure on mental health services generally. We know there are long waiting lists - too long. We have heard all about that time and again. Mental Health Ireland has said that, from a survey it has done, four in ten young adults, that is, between 25 and 34 years of age, have noted that cost was a barrier for them in accessing mental health services or helping them deal with their own mental health. That is also true, maybe not in that specific statistic, across all age groups. Therefore, 31% of people identify cost as a barrier, which is an increase from last year when it was 26%. This is 5% up on last year in terms of those who identify costs as a barrier to accessing mental health services. The Central Statistics Office tells us that if a person is between 15 and 24 his or her weekly median weekly earnings are €347. The typical cost per therapy session is anywhere between €60 and €100. A private counsellor would be more than that again at €90 or over €100, and much more than €100. Getting access to a private psychologist or somebody who will help with those issues a person might face is really difficult, and if the person is in a lower income bracket it is impossible. When we think about all the costs that young people face, whether that is student fees, accommodation or whatever it is, this is a big problem for them. The Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, IACP, makes four simple policy and financial priorities for 2027 as a recommendation for how we can deal with this. VAT being removed from counselling services is the first one and on psychotherapy services. Under the current tax code, mental health services are subject to uneven tax rules. Psychology services are VAT exempt whereas psychotherapy and counselling practitioners who are not registered with the board are required to charge 13.5% VAT when annual turnover exceeds €42,500. Maybe there are good reasons for that but the IACP has identified this as something we can do that is actually tangible and will make a difference. Extending tax relief to counselling and psychotherapy fees is also important because it encourages people to seek early intervention. It also calls for permanently investing in and expanding school counselling. We have had positive feedback from the counselling in primary schools pilot. This is the stage at which children first experience the stress I was talking about at the beginning. We can nip it in the bud if we give them the tools at a young age to deal with it. The counselling in primary schools pilot has been a really good way to put that in place. Thousands of primary schoolchildren benefitted from one-to-one counselling with the introduction of additional well-being practitioners. The IACP recommends establishing these as a permanent service embedded in school well-being teams in primary and secondary schools. Again, putting them in place would be a very tangible thing we could do from a policy perspective. In terms of protecting people, there are also tools out there that are unhelpful. There are certain AI mental health tools out there that are unregulated and require certain inputs and so on, which do not actually help people. We talk so much about artificial intelligence in this House and how we need to protect children online, for example from social media trends and from going down the rabbit hole that can be there on social media but we do not talk about the artificial intelligence tools that people are being encouraged to use to deal with mental health difficulties, which can actually exacerbate the problem. We should also look at regulating them or taking a clear step on them. As I said at the outset, in all of these discussions it is important to recognise the progress that we have made. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, deserves a great deal of credit on that front. I want to acknowledge the work the Minister of State has done. It does not mean that we are taking the foot off the pedal in any respect, and I know the Minister of State is not. There is work to be done but perhaps what is most encouraging about this is that we have identified many of the problems and we have also identified many of the solutions. Really what it leaves us with now is to progress with delivering those solutions and putting in place the measures that help people to deal with those mental health problems at as early an age as possible.

I want to use my time to raise something that is too often missing from the Government's mental health announcements, which is the facilities and capacity to actually provide care. The Government has strategies, action plans and new announcements every year but people are still waiting for an assessment, waiting for a first appointment, waiting for a referral, waiting for a bed and, in far too many cases, waiting in accident and emergency departments, on the CAMHS waiting lists, in homeless accommodation or in the criminal justice system. That is not a mental health service fit for purpose. Along with my party spokesperson on mental health Teachta Clarke, I recently visited the Nua Healthcare facility in Gormanston in my own constituency of Meath East. It is an independent service offering continuing mental health care, long stay mental health rehabilitation and mental health care for people with intellectual disabilities. It was clean, welcoming and therapeutic. There was a strong multidisciplinary approach, individualised care plans and a clear commitment to quality and safety. It was built privately and at considerable expense but it showed me what is possible when proper investment is made in mental health facilities and when the needs of service users are put at the centre of care. The Minister of State should visit it. I know they would be delighted to host the Minister of State as they did us, and separately some of her own Meath-based ministerial colleagues. It seems an excellent facility to me. The problem is that we have too little of it. It is a clear example of private individuals and companies stepping in where the State has failed. We need capacity in every part of the State. This means appropriate inpatient facilities, community-based services and dedicated mental health emergency facilities so that someone experiencing a health crisis does not have to sit in a general accident and emergency department. Sinn Féin has proposed dedicated 24-7 mental health emergency rooms in every major hospital. We have also proposed significant investment in inpatient beds, community teams, eating disorder services, CAMHS and the mental health workforce. The Government's mental health allocation in budget 2027 is welcome, of course, but we need to know how much of it is for new measures versus stand-still. Individuals and families across the State are crying out for services. They cannot wait any longer.

On World Mental Health Day, we will have the opportunity to reflect on something that touches on every family, every community and every workplace in this country. The theme this year is lived experiences heard, real voices and real change. We need to reflect on that in our discussion today. We all need to think about how we can meaningfully bring the voices of people with mental health experiences into the policy conversations around mental health. I am conscious of the many people who have spoken to me in my constituency as a TD about these issues. I have sought to bring their lived experiences into some of the remarks I am making here today. Mental health is not a niche issue. It is not something that affects only a small section of society. It is part of all our lives. Just as we all have physical health we all have mental health and at different points of our lives we face challenges, we face pressures, we face setbacks and we face periods of difficulty with our mental health. The central question is how society responds to that. Ireland has come a long way in how we think and how we talk about mental health. Previous generations lived through a time when mental health or illnesses were heavily stigmatised, when people were often isolated rather than supported, and when services were underdeveloped and under-resourced. We should acknowledge that real progress has been made. There is far greater understanding, more openness and a stronger recognition that mental health deserves the same attention and the same priority as physical health. We also know that many people struggle still to get the support they need. For too many individuals and families seeking help this still involves long waiting lists, uncertainty and frustration. We continue to hear concerns about access to services, particularly for children and for young people. We know that young people today navigate a very complex world. They face pressures that previous generations did not experience in the same way, from social media, online harms, housing insecurity, educational pressures and global uncertainty. While many young people are thriving others are finding those challenges really difficult. This is why community-based mental health supports are so important. Services that engage with young people in a welcoming, accessible and non-judgmental way can make an enormous difference. We have all seen examples of various organisations around the country helping young people at the right time before difficulties escalate to becoming a crisis. I am particularly conscious of the amazing work that Jigsaw does in my constituency in Dublin 15. I had a small involvement with the establishment of its services over 15 years ago. I regularly meet young people who have had the benefit of those short and targeted interventions that have really made a change in their lives. These interventions do change lives. They help young people remain connected to education, to their communities and, most importantly, to their ambitions for the future. We know that young people wait months for appointments still. Parents struggle to navigate a fragmented system. Community services remain overstretched and mental health professionals are carrying unsustainable caseloads. Despite years of promises, we continue to see a gap between what governments say is a priority and what people are experiencing on the ground. The gap is perhaps most visible in child and adolescent mental health services. For years families have been told that reform is coming. We have had report after report that highlight serious shortcomings. We have had repeated commitments to expand capacity, improve governance and recruit staff. However, too many children are still waiting too long for support. In May, the HSE said in a reply to a parliamentary question of mine that in CHO 9, which includes Blanchardstown, 90 children and young adults were waiting more than nine months for a CAMHS appointment following a referral. We all would agree that this is too long a wait for children and young adults. The reality is that mental health policy cannot be judged by strategies, action plans and press releases. It must be judged by whether young people who are in distress are able to access help when they need it. Unfortunately, for too many families, the answer is "No". While the figures show there are clear issues with access to crisis services, we also continue to underinvest in prevention and early intervention. We know early intervention works. We know that supporting a young person at the first signs of difficulty can prevent far more serious challenges from developing later on. We know that community-based services like Jigsaw can transform young people's lives. Yet, early intervention still is the poor relation of our wider mental health system. Too often, supports are only available if a person's situation has significantly deteriorated. By then, as we know, the personal cost, the financial cost and the impact on family are greater. The current approach makes no sense from either a human or a public policy perspective. Investment in youth mental health services should not begin when a crisis emerges. It should begin far earlier. That requires sustained support for youth services, school-based well-being initiatives, community organisations, family supports and early intervention programmes that meet young people where they are at. Today is an opportunity to recognise the work of families, carers, mental health professionals and volunteers across Ireland. Every day, often without recognition, they provide support, compassion and help to young people who need it the most. As we approach World Mental Health Day, let us recommit to building a society where mental health is treated with the seriousness it deserves, where support is available when people need it, where prevention and early intervention are prioritised and where every single person can live with dignity, well-being and hope.

The week of World Mental Health Day is a good time to reflect on the progress that has been made in mental healthcare while also recognising the work that remains to be done to ensure that people, particularly young people, can access support when they need it most. Mental ill health does not care about age, background, profession or circumstance. It can hit at any time, none of us is immune and nobody should feel any stigma in seeking help. That is why timely and effective mental health services are so important. We are seeing some good developments in this area. Beaumont Hospital, in my constituency, is establishing a specialist mental health crisis nursing team, with triage nurses providing vital support to people on the northside presenting to the emergency department in acute mental distress. The sooner that service is up and running the better. It is really important. The best mental healthcare starts in the community with services that are accessible, timely and available close to where people live. While I welcome the Government's commitment to expanding community-based therapy and early intervention support, we need to see that delivery accelerated. Too many people say they struggle to access help when they need it most. One in eight of the people who come to emergency departments following self-harm leave before decisions are made about their ongoing care. I have seen some examples of that, with only a small proportion receiving a specialist mental health assessment. There is a particular challenge out of hours and that needs to be fixed. People who present at an emergency department in the midst of a mental health crisis are often vulnerable. They deserve compassionate and specialist care. Above all, as I know the Minister of State agrees, they deserve to know that help is available and accessible to them. I welcome the additional €108 million allocated to mental health services in budget 2027. That is a very positive development that will, as I understand it, provide for an additional 285 clinicians across the services and support further investment in specialist eating disorder and perinatal mental health facilities. Support for eating disorder services is an area of particular interest to me. We must do better to support people with eating disorders across the country. I have raised on a number of occasions the challenges faced by young people coming out of CAMHS and into adult mental health services. For many families, it can be an anxious and uncertain period in which they are wondering where their loved ones will go and who will look after them. Too often, those young people find themselves navigating different teams, locations and services at a time when continuity of care is very important. The peak age for onset of anorexia nervosa, for example, is 15 to 17 years, a period that often coincides with differing transition points between physical health services, where the cut-off is 16 years, and mental health services, where it is 18. We must ensure that CAMHS and adult mental health services link up together, integrate and work in a seamless way. International evidence suggests that approximately 10% of young people require ongoing adult eating disorder care following the transition from children's services. We must ensure that path is available and accessible for those who need it. Co-located, collaborative and integrated services can help to ensure no young person falls through the cracks during that transition. I know that the Minister of State agrees and that she is interested in this area. I really welcome the progress that has been made in it but I ask that we keep the pedal to the metal because it is so important for the younger generations. Eating disorders are really difficult to deal with for families and, most importantly, for the sufferers themselves. They are part of the mental health sphere. I ask that we ensure mental health services are accessible, responsive and capable of meeting the needs of those who rely on them. That must be central to our response to the challenge as we move forward.

As we approach World Mental Health Day, I take this opportunity to speak about an issue that affects every community in this country, including in my constituency of Laois. Mental health is not a peripheral issue. It is a major public health issue, a family issue, a community issue and, increasingly, an issue that affects our economy, our schools and our workplaces. Most importantly, mental health difficulties do not affect only the person experiencing them; they can affect an entire family. When a parent is struggling with depression or anxiety, when a young person is waiting for specialist support or when a family member develops a serious mental illness, the impact can extend to spouses, children, parents and siblings. It is impact that often goes unseen. Families can experience worry, exhaustion, financial pressure, disruption to work and education, relationship difficulties and a constant fear about what might happen next. Children can carry experiences with them for years, sometimes without ever having the words to explain what they witnessed or experienced. That is why we must recognise mental health as a major issue in its own right, not something that should only receive attention when somebody reaches crisis point. In Laois, we have dedicated professionals doing extremely important work every day. We have an adult community mental health service, child and adolescent mental health services, services for older people, community-based supports and voluntary organisations providing invaluable assistance to families. The HSE's local information identifies a range of mental health services across the Laois-Offaly area, including adult community mental health teams, CAMHS, youth services, psychiatry of later life services, psychiatric liaison services and specialised services. However, a service existing on paper is not the same as having timely access to that service. I have raised concerns directly with the Minister for Health and the HSE regarding adult mental health services in Laois, including concerns about the frequency and duration of appointments and access to therapeutic interventions and ongoing clinical support. They are not abstract concerns. They relate directly to the experience of people trying to access care in County Laois. I have also raised specific concerns about staffing, waiting times, continuity of care and patient experience. Those matters deserve continued attention. We need to ask ourselves whether we are providing the right level of support at the right time, before people and families reach crisis point. CAMHS provides specialist services for young people under 18 experiencing moderate to severe mental health difficulties. The HSE itself acknowledges that depending on demand and circumstances, a young person can sometimes wait a year for a first CAMHS appointment. For a child or a teenager, a year is a long period in their life. A year can mean the difference between a problem being identified and supported early, or becoming more deeply entrenched in a young person's education, relationships, confidence and family life. We also need to look carefully at the transitions from child and adolescent services to adult services. Turning 18 should not mean that a young person suddenly finds themselves navigating a different system with a different set of eligibility criteria and potentially different supports. We need continuity. We also need to recognise that not every person who needs help will meet the threshold for specialist service. There is an important role for community and voluntary organisations, primary care counselling, peer support and early intervention. The HSE itself provides information on a wide range of organisations and supports available to people experiencing mental health difficulties. These supports must complement properly resourced public services; they cannot be regarded as a substitute for them. As a Government TD, I believe that we must continue to invest in mental health services and that investment must be measured by outcomes. Can a person get an appointment when they need one? Can they see the appropriate professional? Can they receive meaningful therapeutic intervention? Can families get information and support? Is there a continuity of care? Critically, can we intervene early enough to prevent a crisis? World Mental Health Day is an opportunity to change and challenge the stigma that still surrounds mental health. Awareness alone is not enough. We need people to know that they do not have to wait until breaking point before looking for support. We need families to know that they too deserve support. For every person experiencing a mental health difficulty, there can be parents lying awake at night, partners who do not know what to say, children who are frightened, siblings who feel helpless and families who simply do not where to turn.

Give me one minute. The traumatic effects of mental ill-health within a family are not always visible. They may not appear in statistics, waiting lists, figures or service activity reports, but they are real. We have a responsibility to recognise them-----

The Deputy has gone way over time.

Early intervention must be prioritised.

I ask the Minister of State for that. Families must be supported.

Sinn Féin's vision for mental health is simple. We want to see people receive the appropriate care in a timely manner, delivered by a workforce that is properly resourced and not stretched to breaking point. It is the vision of every mental health worker in this country and we will strive to match that vision and hope with resources required to deal with our mental health crisis. I commend our mental health services in Dublin 15, such as the counselling services that are desperately trying to fill the gaps in services. I have raised this every year for the last three years. For just €200,000, Genesis Counselling Services could increase its counselling service by 4,000 hours. That would eliminate any waiting list that we have in Dublin 15. It would transform its ability to operate. We recently met incredible young people who have been supported by Dublin 15's Jigsaw project. The transformation in their lives has been incredible and amazing. The Mountview Family Resource Centre is looking for €400,000 for an extension. It cannot operate. It has been operating amazingly in really limited space and it needs that money to develop. I am privileged and proud to be on the board of the Dublin 15 Community Addiction Team. I have been for a number of years. Recently, I have become the chairperson of the Blakestown and Mountview Youth Initiative, which is a project I was involved in back in the nineties and I have re-engaged with it. They are doing incredible stuff for young people and people within addiction. I raise the Tolka River Project. I would like to mention a guy I am close to, Mr. John Boland, who has done amazing work with those in recovery. We have just had recovery month. It is a joyful occasion that gives hope to everyone currently in addiction that there is a way out of the life they are in at the moment. There is a different life. Every person I have met in the mental health services lives every day with hope. They bring that message of hope across the services. There is no doubt that, for a number of years, we have been in a mental health crisis. I have lost count of the number of people who have contacted my office in desperation looking for help and supports. They are parents with teenagers in severe mental health crisis unable to access help and support. They are adults desperately trying to get support to deal with their mental health. They are crying out for appropriate intervention at the right time when it is needed. They are stuck in emergency departments for dozens of hours, and told to come back in a few weeks when they have an appointment for a psychiatrist even though they need that help now. The NTA has had to raise the barriers on the bridge next to Connolly Hospital due to several suicides over recent years. It is desperately sad and we should not have to build infrastructure to physically prevent a person from dying by suicide. We need to invest heavily in the infrastructure and the professionally trained people to prevent it getting to that stage. Neurodiverse people have been left between a rock and a hard place, unable to access supports in time, having a devastating impact on their mental health. A person in the Traveller community is seven times more likely to die by suicide. I have been fighting for services for the community. I welcome the extra funding for the Traveller community, but it needs to be consistent. There have been decades of underinvestment for the Traveller community. We have had endless strategies, reports and promises.

You have all said that.

People need mental health support. They need the funding. I have outlined a couple of the organisations in Dublin that would love some of that extra funding.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate this afternoon as we mark World Mental Health Day this coming Saturday. As Minister with responsibility for public health, well-being and the national drugs strategy, I see every day the close connection between mental health, physical health and overall well-being. We know that promoting good mental health is not simply about responding when people are in crisis; it is also about creating the conditions that help people to thrive, build resilience and maintain well-being throughout their lives. World Mental Health Day gives us an opportunity not only to raise awareness, but also to renew our commitment to ensuring that mental health is treated with the same seriousness, compassion and urgency as physical health. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, always says that there is no health without mental health. I think we all live by that now. We have to think of mental health in everything that we do, including in developing policies in the health service. We must think about the effects of mental health in all areas of people's lives. We must support children and young people as they grow and develop. We must do everything to ensure we help people to stay connected in their communities. We must recognise the challenges that can arise from loneliness, disadvantage, addiction, poverty, discrimination or social isolation. We must also ensure that people know where they can turn for help when they need it. That is why I was delighted to get a call from the Minister of State this week that she is allocating €330,000 in budget 2027 to establish a new Solace café in my own constituency in Carlow town, along with five other locations across the country, to better respond to people in mental health crisis or distress. Solace cafés are free out-of-hours community-based mental health services, providing a welcoming, non-clinical alternative for people experiencing mental health distress or crisis. Operating primarily during evenings and weekends, they provide crisis support, peer and community support and signposting to appropriate services in an informal and accessible setting. I compliment the Minister of State on that. For people I am working with, I compliment the Minister of State on that particular funding across the country. I acknowledge the vital role played by all community and voluntary organisations in Carlow-Kilkenny and across the country. Every day, dedicated staff and volunteers provide support, understanding and hope to people who may be struggling. Their contribution is invaluable, and they are often the first point of contact for those seeking help. I also acknowledge the invaluable work of the Irish Men's Sheds Association. The Department, along with the Department of rural and community development and the HSE, has allocated funding to the association, which does excellent work in our communities. Men's sheds offer support and a social environment for men, leading to reduced isolation, a stronger sense of community and improved health and well-being. There are now over 450 sheds established throughout the country. I will also mention the women's sheds that do excellent work too. We have made significant progress in recent years in strengthening mental health services and supports. We continue to expand community-based services, improve access to specialist care and ensure that people can receive support closer to home. While progress has been made, however, we know there is more to do. Some people still face barriers in accepting supports. Waiting times can remain too long in some areas. Families caring for loved ones experiencing mental health issues often carry a heavy burden. Young people continue to report increasing levels of anxiety and stress. These are the challenges that require sustained attention and sustained investment. This Government and Minister of State, Deputy Butler, remain committed to addressing them. We are here today in this Chamber, and on Saturday we will celebrate World Mental Health Day as an opportunity to continue to challenge stigma, which is a huge issue here. While attitudes have improved significantly, we must continue to foster a culture where it is acceptable to speak openly and without fear about mental health. We must ensure that whether it is a man, woman or child, they ask for help and it is seen as a sign of strength. Nobody should feel ashamed. Nobody must feel isolated because of their experience. In my areas of responsibility, I am particularly conscious of links between mental health and substance use. Too often, people experience mental health difficulties and can face challenges related to alcohol, drugs or addiction. Effective responses require integrated services, early intervention and a person-centred approach that recognise the complexity of people's lives and experience. Today, let us reaffirm a simple but important message: mental health matters. It matters at every stage of life, it matters in every community and it matters to Government. As we mark World Mental Health Day, let us continue work together across government, across sectors and across society to build a country where everyone can access the support they need for their well-being. It is also to promote and protect to ensure that everybody who experiences mental health difficulties is treated with dignity, compassion and respect.

I thank the Minister of State. I appreciate the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, staying in the Chamber. She does her job diligently. I thank her. I wish to give a shout-out in solidarity with my colleagues, the nurses, who are out in protest today. I wish them all the best for the negotiations ahead and across the public sector. World Mental Health Day is on Saturday. We are going to be engaging in our constituencies. We are going to be gathering around the magnificent Trees of Hope, a community initiative and tool of repair in our communities to remember those tragically lost and the unfathomable grief for those left behind and applaud those who want and demand to be heard. Understanding and empathy is a cornerstone of a fit-for-purpose mental health service. I am taking this opportunity to inform the House of the situation regarding recruitment. Everybody is focused, as I usually am, on mental health and well-being, but it is also important to acknowledge the difficulties faced by the carers. We are caring for the carers, in this case, my colleagues, registered mental health nurses, who are experts and have always been the bedrock of mental health services. Back in 2018, as a member of the Joint Committee on Future of Mental Health Care, we heard testimony from the Psychiatric Nurses Association of Ireland, which outlined the hiring process. It was a staggering 27-stage process that blindsided committee members. How could this paralysis be allowed? Did nobody in the HSE think it odd or farcical as services were short-staffed and under pressure, compromising my colleagues' duty of care and failing many in distress? Almost a decade on, that recruitment policy has significantly deteriorated. There are over 50 nursing vacancies in adult mental health services in Tallaght alone and over 40 vacancies in Mullingar, yet panels exist from which to hire on which there has been little movement for years. We are in 2026; it is worse than ever. The HSE avoids direct employment. It relies on an agency, which is known to cost hundreds of millions of euro. It is for many reasons not a satisfactory arrangement for staffing and therapeutic input. The HSE avoids its responsibilities in ensuring a healthy, responsive and moderate mental health service. It breaches the agreed staff ratio on a regular basis. Nurses I know regularly go to work in the morning and expect to run short-staffed on a daily basis. Recruitment is at a standstill, while the administration - the endless forms - really sinks people's spirit. The Minister of State has a duty of care to ensure every patient gets the care they deserve, and every patient deserves a nurse.

The Minister of State does hear the real voices, and she is implementing real change. She, her ministerial colleagues and support team and, most importantly, the front-line teams and volunteers are to be commended on their commitment to Sharing the Vision; the four tiers, the 100 recommendations and the 7% year-on-year budgetary increases, which will provide front-line and badly needed community-based services, in particular, youth focused services. I welcome the increase in services to be delivered from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, which will also well serve the people of the Meath East. However, I would request more resourcing for the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, teams in Meath. The community-based supports by Jigsaw Meath, Youth Work Ireland Meath, Grow Mental Health Meath, the special community employment, CE, scheme in Cavan, Meath Community Drug and Alcohol Response and the recovery cafe run by Mr. Bernard Kenny and teams do phenomenal work. We will be most grateful for the benefit of future funds that could come their way. I wish to draw the Minister of State's attention to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Disability Matters report on inclusive education in which we request that support is provided for children and young people's emotional well-being. That support can manifest as funding for nurture rooms, garden spaces and outdoor activities to enable calming and grounding when emotions run high or someone is overstimulated. Tonight, at 9 p.m., a local primary teacher and well-being practitioner, Ms Una Curran of Finding Your Wings Well-being, is offering a free online relaxation course for teenagers and adults. Breathing, gentle movement, stretching and relaxation help the body to settle and give the mind a rest. Looking after our mental health starts with giving ourselves permission to pause. Some 40 years ago, when I began studying life science, the body and the mind were considered to be separate entities, yet we know now that they are in inextricably linked. Therefore, we must always be conscious and supportive of this delicate balance. External factors, including economic inequality, consumerism, artificial desires and austerity, to name but a few, can also affect our mental health. Dr. James Davies has written an excellent, thought-provoking book on this matter. He explores how emotional pain is often treated as a biochemical defect of the brain rather than a rational reaction to social or economic environments. It highlights to me the importance of the work we do in this House across policy and legislation, and the need for us to consider the broadest impacts of our actions. On World Mental Health Day, I say, "mens sana in corpore sano"; a healthy mind in a healthy body.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. Tá sé an-tábhachtach go bhfuilimid ag caint faoin ábhar seo: sláinte intinne. I also want to thank the Minister of State for delivering two new Solace mental health cafés for Dublin, one for the north inner city and one for Dublin Mid-West. She knows how much those cafes will make a difference to people. I commend the free counselling that is available online. Since the announcement, a lot of people have logged on to it; it is really making a difference. There is always more we can do, however, and I look forward to working with the Minister of State on a few issues I will highlight. Young men still feel like it is not okay to not be okay. They feel like they cannot reach out to someone. There is definitely huge scope for us to go around to secondary schools and primary schools and tell young men that it is okay to speak about it. The percentage of young people still experiencing mental health difficulties is too high. We have seen a lot of changes since the Minister of State has taken the role and while I welcome the work she has done, we also need to say that mental health does not work in isolation from the rest of people's lives. Mental health can be faced by many, from loneliness to addiction and stress. There is an entire approach we need to take from a lot of Departments. In particular, I look forward to working with the Minister of State on the ADHD reform committee. A lot of young men and women in north Dublin with undiagnosed ADHD experience a lot of challenges because they are undiagnosed. There are so many studies that show that with diagnosed ADHD, the chances of getting involved in crime or falling into addiction are a lot lower when they are going through treatment and the correct procedures to help them. I look forward to working with the Minister of State on that.

There is no health without mental health. A Cheann Comhairle, you were a strong advocate when you were sitting on the benches opposite. For many years, you always advocated for mental health. I know you still do in your own way. I also acknowledge all those who work across mental health in the public, private and voluntary sectors. I am conscious of how hard they work and what a difficult job they have at times. I acknowledge some of our partners in the Gallery today who have sat through the whole debate. We have the chief executive of Shine, Nicola Byrne; we have Ray Burke and Kieran Murphy. From the Samaritans, we have Brian Mannion. I might be the political face and the Minister of State for mental health but it is all a partnership. It is everyone working together. Whether it is the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health or the various partners we have, it is really important that we acknowledge that. I might be the face of it from a political perspective as Minister of State for mental health. There are a couple of things I want to put on the record. First, last week, the Minister for Health hosted the various ministers for health from across Europe. We were all there in a room. They were absolutely blown away by the fact that Ireland is the only country in Europe that has a stand-alone Minister of State for mental health who sits at a Cabinet table. They were very impressed with that and also that we have a Minister for disability, a Minister of State - who is behind me - for public health and drugs strategy, and a Minister of State for older people. It is not something they have seen in their own countries. The way it works is that there is one person, and they are trying to do a huge amount of work. It points to the fact that we, as a Government, put a huge emphasis on mental health. There are a few points I want to speak about. I cannot answer everything. I answered a lot of questions in the opening statement, which was quite long. I know people have copies of it and they will get a lot of information from that. The first thing I want to talk about is not something that normally comes up, but it came up. That was cost. People associated cost with supports. All supports provided through the mental health budget of €1.657 billion next year are free. Whether it is for older people and the psychiatry of later life services, who do the most amazing job; general adult mental health services; CAMHS; our talk therapies; the children and young people's services committees, CYPSC; or the free counselling supports for men, there is not a cost associated with it, whether it is the Solace cafés; our day centres; or Jigsaw, who are our partners. We have expanded Jigsaw for next year. This time last year, I stood here saying there was going to be a new Jigsaw in Waterford. I do not think anyone could accuse me of being parochial because I was five years in the job at that stage and it took that while for me to get a Jigsaw for Waterford. It opened in Waterford four weeks ago and already, at the end of last week, it had seen 45 young people. We will have to expand it out, and we are expanding it into New Ross and west Waterford with that kind of bespoke hub model. At the moment in Ireland, Jigsaw has 73% coverage. By next year, we will have 90% coverage. Some 135,000 more young people will get the benefit of Jigsaw and I hope that in next year's budget I will be able to do the lot, and we will get to the stage where we have 100% coverage. I also want to make it clear that any young person, regardless of where they live, can access Jigsaw online, where there is 100% coverage. It is really important to know there are free counselling supports for people. Last September, I launched free counselling supports for men with €2 million, partnered with family resource centres and Community Therapy Ireland, Exchange House Ireland, and with the Organisation of National Ex-Service Personnel, ONE, the retired veterans' association. It is also partnered with the farmers, and the Irish Farmers Association, IFA. That is important because I heard Deputy Newsome Drennan state that 23% of farmers might have suicidal ideation and I am worried that people do not know what supports we have. As for those free counselling supports launched on 1 September last year, some 8,000 men have taken them up. I got the new figures today and I was just blown away. Many of them were for the first time. Through yourmentalhealth.ie/men or your GP you can self-refer to Connect Counselling. You could be sitting at your own kitchen table tonight between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m., you can pick up the phone to Connect Counselling and you will be answered. You can have up to six free phone calls and even at that stage if you need to be seen, you can be seen. I am worried that not everybody knows about those supports. I thank all the partners in relation to that. I want to touch on eating disorders as well because there is a lot of inaccurate information being bandied around. First, the model of care for eating disorders was launched in 2018. At that stage, there was a perception, having been designed, that maybe 60 or 70 young people might need an eating disorder support. Unfortunately, during Covid, we saw that completely change. The model of care asked for 16 teams; there are now, as of next year's budget, 17 teams funded. Eleven of them are in place and there are three under recruitment. It takes about a year and a half to stand up an eating disorder team. I did not realise that at the start. It takes that length. You have to recruit the consultant psychiatrist and then you have the clinical psychologist, clinical nurse specialist, social worker, occupational therapist, dietician and administrative staff. The whole way down, it takes about 18 months. I am very conscious about what Deputy Ó Muirí said earlier regarding the transfer over from CAMHS to general adult services. We have two examples at the moment; one in Swords and the other - I wrote it down and now I cannot find it - in another area of Dublin where we have the colocation of the adult service. I will get the Deputy the exact details of the adult and CAMHS teams. That is what we want to see. The reason why there are 17 teams is that such was the demand in Dublin, they looked for an additional team, and we put that team in. The last team being announced this week was for Limerick and is an adult team, which is really welcome. People are very critical of me on the fact that there are still only three adult beds. I am not a clinician and I took the advice. The reason I took the advice to stand up the community teams first was because 90% of all those who need eating disorder supports are treated in the community. What has to be put on the record of the Dáil is that this year alone, the mental health budget supported €112 million in private placements. So we can be very clear, there might be three beds in St. Vincent's University Hospital but €112 million has been spent on private placements, including eating disorders. There is an additional €12 million for next year, which will bring it to €124 million. A Cheann Comhairle, I have to clarify this. Since the model of care was launched in 2018, no child in Ireland has been sent abroad for treatment. That has to be noted - no child. If families decide to look for private care and go abroad, I cannot be responsible for that but all I know is that of anyone who has come through the HSE or our eating disorder teams, no child had to be sent abroad. They have been treated here. I was also struck by what Deputy O'Rourke said about Nua Healthcare. He lauded it. What he should do is go and visit Merlin Park University Hospital or, for example, Cherry Orchard Hospital, where we have our eating disorder and inpatient teams, and Éist Linn in Cork. We have fantastic public services all over the country. We have very good private services as well but we have fantastic public services. We will have a lot more due to the funding that has been received for the capital plan. I also wish to make a clarification on the mother and baby unit. It will be built at St. Vincent's. I thank Ms Martina Queally, the regional executive officer of that particular area, who has worked with the board in regard to that. There will be more adult eating disorder beds going in there too. Before I finish, we all speak about lived experience. I wear my heart on my sleeve every day of the week when I talk about mental health. We heard Deputies Roche and Cahill wear their hearts on their sleeves and speak about being bereaved by suicide. That is Sharing the Vision. That is our mental health policy. I would come into the Dáil any day of the week and speak about mental health. We must all share the message that there are free counselling supports out there for anybody who needs them, especially for those in the LGBTQ+ community and the trans community. We are now extending free counselling supports to women. I have secured €1 million for next year's budget to expand that through the children and young people's services committee, CYPSC. I have also secured an additional 33,000 counselling supports with all our partners, from family resource centres to all our NGO partners. There is help out there. I ask people to take it, please. It could be too late if they do not.