Martin Daly: Urges more beds amid £1.6bn mental health boost

Thanks Minister. Just in the context of very significant additional funding to the mental health services over the last five years, resulting in a £1.6 billion investment this year in mental health services for 2026, and for the sixth year in a row, the increase in staffing of that, I'd like if the Minister would make a statement on the funding provided for the mental health crisis support and suicide prevention in 2026. The total allocation for mental health services in 2026 is almost £1.6 billion, which is in a sixth year in a row of which the mental health budget has increased. This increase in funding for mental health services will enable continued policy implementation and service improvements in line with our national mental health policy, so that is sharing the vision and our national suicide and self-heim reduction strategy connections for life. Across a board, continuing for mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention through specialist mental health services. This record budget will allow for a focus on improving support for people in mental health crisis, both in hospitals and in the community, through an additional £15 million for crisis supports and suicide prevention. Significant progress has been made over the past three years to develop alternative crisis mental health pathways. However, emergency departments continue to see high volumes of mental health presentations. Investment this year will be used to establish specialist nursing teams in all Model 4 hospital emergency departments, three new crisis resolution services in Donegal, Currie and Midlands, 12 additional suicide crisis assessment nurses and several Traveller-Pacific suicide prevention initiatives. The development of the new crisis response pathway for children and young people increased funding for suicide prevention community and voluntary organisations and funding to implement the new suicide reduction strategy. As occurs each year following the budget, discussions take place with the HSE on details relating to Pacific service initiatives in the context of preparing the HSE service plan for 2026, including that for mental health. Thank you, Minister. I think it is extremely important that we do continue and progress the investment in our mental health services. We still lag behind the international acceptive norms for spending in on mental health as a proportion of our budget. And it is true to say, and you've identified this, and so has Minister Butler, and she's done some tremendous work in this regard, the tsunami of mental health issues that have arisen, most especially since COVID. And it is important as a practicing GP that when we do refer people who are in crisis that there are adequate pathways for them to achieve treatment. We've had situations or I've had situations where young people in crisis have sat in emergency rooms for eight, nine hours to wait for assessment who are actively suicidal. And I think the initiative where we're putting specialist nursing teams into all Model 4 emergency departments is a really good initiative because it will provide an immediate assessment by a specialist nurse. Thank you, Deputy. Minister. Absolutely, and thank you, Deputy. And like if you see it now, we have, and the Minister I know is very passionate, has been working very hard on, so there's three new crisis resolution services. So these are the crisis cafes to support people in distress. So we have them in Donegal, Currie and the Midlands, Tullamore, Westmeath, which 4 million. There's 12 additional suicide as the nurses for supporting people in distress who present to GPs in the community, another million. Funding of 415,000 for several Traveller Pacific suicide prevention initiatives, which has been co-designed with the Traveller community. Increased funding of 1.7 million for suicide prevention community and voluntary organisations, including Pieta. Funding of 1 million to implement a new suicide reduction strategy. And also funding to develop a new crisis response pathway for children and young people with 19 new CAM specialist doctors for emergency liaison. That's out of hours, as well as five new adult liaison psychiatrists and that's 4 million. We also have, I'll come back in again because my time is up. Okay, thank you, thank you, Deputy. No, I welcome all those initiatives and I think it's really important that those initiatives are integrated with the mental health services as we have now, because we can have initiatives, They need to be even and consistent throughout the country with adequate access. In addition to that, we also need to look in the totality at our acute mental health capacity in terms of beds. We have a situation in Roscommon University Hospital in the Acute Psychiatric Unit where up to a third of the beds were taken by people who would have been better served in supported situations in the community. Unfortunately, in County Roscommon, after the closure of the mental health or the psychiatric hospital in Castle Reap, there were many community hospitals and there were problems identified with them. But there has been no replacement capacity in the community for those people to step them down into those beds and to create space for acute presentations to the psychiatric unit. Thank you. I absolutely will go back to Minister Butler on those points. They are very important points. We absolutely need more beds and I know the Minister for Health, Jennifer Caron MacNeill, would be also very much aware of that. That is something that the government are looking at and it is something that I know the Minister will definitely be working on. If you go back even to the challenge of suicide in extremely complex cases, we have seen a single event of the factor that leads someone to take their own life. There are huge issues there. So we need to get, you know, supports for families, individuals and communities in itself. But just an action that the Minister is working on. So at the moment, the Minister herself is working on the new suicide reduction strategy. So it is currently being drafted and will be published and all that will be in that, different beds and whatever. So the first implementation of the plan of this new strategy will be developed in quarter one, 2026. And I certainly will bring back your concerns about more beds and thank you for highlighting this.