Eating Disorders
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

The Deputy raised a valid point. The priority over the past few years has been community supports because 90% of people with an eating disorder are treated in the community. It is a very difficult mental health disorder and for many people it takes over their entire life. It can sometimes take up to seven years for recovery and some people relapse. It is very challenging, and I am happy to see the roll-out of the supports. The demand is still very high, and we will continue to do that.
In relation to young people under 18 years old with an eating disorder, we have 22 dedicated beds in Cherry Orchard, Dublin, Merlin Park, Galway and Eist Linn, County Cork. The story is not a good when it comes to adults. This is my next focus. We currently have three dedicated beds in St. Vincent's Hospital Dublin specifically for that particular area. We conducted the bed capacity review and I was delighted to work with the Minister for Health, Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, to secure significant capital investment from 2026 to 2030 sitting somewhere around €400 million for mental health. I have never had that kind of funding available to me before for capital investment. As a result, we will invest in 20 adult beds. We will locat them geographically. From memory, there will be approximately eight to ten beds in the Dublin region, six in the Cork region and another approximately six in the Roscommon region. The reason they are located like that is these are three areas we have identified and approved for building new centres with departments of psychiatry where we will include these beds. The most important thing is that a person does not have to be living in that particular area to access a bed. That is a specific problem we have at the moment with St. Vincent's Hospital. I am really pleased we will be able to move this on. It does take time, but we are certainly making progress.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09