Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-29 ============================================================ Mary Butler (FF), Waterford I thank the Senator for her amendments. I did not support amendment No. 337 when it was proposed in the Dáil and I am not minded to support it today. When I came into my role as Minister of State with responsibility for mental health services in July 2020, the first document I was handed was Sharing the Vision, which became my bible. It is a mental health policy that puts the service user first and centre. It is cross-departmental, which is really important because mental health does not only sit within the Department of Health but crosses different Departments. I was really pleased that, for the first time ever, there was a recognition in Sharing the Vision of dual diagnosis. However, the game-changer for me was the national implementation and monitoring committee, NIMC. I do not mean to be condescending but there are a lot of new Senators who may not realise that committee is in place. Establishing it, which I achieved by Christmas 2020, was one of the first things I did in my role as Minister of State. I understand Sharing the Vision is one of the only Government policies that has a national implementation and monitoring committee. I work closely with the committee, which is now in its second iteration, chaired by Ms Catherine Brogan. It has a steering group, an HSE implementation group, a reference group and associated specialist groups. One of those specialist groups, for example, did a review of bed capacity. We also did a review of the transition between CAMHS and general adult mental services, which the Senator mentioned yesterday. Dr. Mark Smyth, a clinical psychologist, led on that and did a huge amount of work. We have also set up a committee on the Traveller community, which is having its very first meeting today. I am really pleased about that. I get asked very few questions about NIMC because it works so well. Anybody can log onto the website and see the work it does. It presents a report every quarter. I meet regularly with the chairperson and will meet with her again soon. What she has done, which is great, is bring the NIMC meetings to the regions. The most recent one I attended was down in Limerick. People delivering mental health services in the community there came in, made presentations and showed me the type of work they are doing. This includes the integrated care programme for older people, ICPOP, partnering with psychiatry in later life. They also showed me the work they are doing in relation to social prescribing. For the first time ever, we have a CAMHS team in Limerick doing social farming. The new programme will be setting up in March and I look forward to going down to see it. Arising from the NIMC structures, we have short-, medium- and long-term goals. I am constantly presented with reports on where we are going and setting out the progress on those goals. Sharing the Vision is one of the only policies I have encountered where there is anything like NIMC. It holds the Government, the Cabinet, the Minister and me to account. We did not have that oversight previously. Putting it in place is why we have made so much progress on mental health over the past five years, notwithstanding all the challenges we face, the pent-up demand after the Covid period and the fact our population has increased by 750,000 in the past eight years. We have to factor all of that into maintaining services. As I have outlined, the work of NIMC means I am not in a position to support amendment No. 337. I cannot support amendment No. 348. I am not sure whether Senator Ryan realises that this Sinn Féin amendment would delete the section on care plans and replace it with a section relating to HSE performance oversight. Care plans are very important to me. The HSE already collects a wealth of data on performance and there are monthly performance review meetings between my Department and the executive. Another factor to note is that we now have in the HSE what we never had previously. In fairness to the former chief executive, Mr. Paul Reid, one of the last things I managed to squeeze out of him before he left was the establishment of a dedicated youth mental health office within the HSE specifically dealing with patients aged under 18. I had a performance meeting at 9.30 this morning, which I do every single month, to see where we are on recruitment of the staff I secured for mental health services under last year's budget. There were 200 whole-time equivalent staff last year and we are already looking at reaching the 300 whole-time equivalent staff I secured under budget 2026. I monitor that on a monthly basis, as does my team in the Department, to see where we are on recruiting staff. Recruitment can be difficult because, at times, we are all, whether public, private or voluntary, dipping into the same pot in looking for advanced nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, educational psychologists, counselling psychologists, social workers, etc. It sometimes happens that when a person from one particular area is recruited, there is a space there and we are looking at back-filling, which can cause problems. I deal with these kinds of issues every day of the week but I hardly ever get the opportunity to speak about it. That meeting took place at 9.30 this morning to see how recruitment of those whole-time equivalent staff in mental health services, for whom I break my back every year to secure additional funding, is progressing. The fact NIMC is there, sitting above me the whole time, keeps me focused. I cannot remove the care plans to have HSE performance oversight. It is probably a play on words. I would not say that it was meant. It is just a wording issue. I thank the Senator for the constructive way she has dealt with these amendments. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-01-29/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-29