Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-29
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Nicole Ryan (SF), Administrative Panel

-----and the work she has done. It is very difficult to go back to my constituency and the likes of Charleville, which has had so many deaths due to suicide in the past two to three years, and sit with the grandparents of the person who has been lost and say we have lots of funding, we just do not have services in the area for people and, unfortunately, the public transport that we have is not up to scratch for them to access the services in the city or Mallow. People often say to me that we have the Mallow primary healthcare centre and that it is fantastic. It is fantastic for the people around the area, but now we have accessibility issues. There are older people who may not be able to get there and timetabled transport services do not run. There is a myriad of issues. That is not just the Minister of State's remit. It is the remit of other Departments as well.
This is when there is no service, especially in rural areas where people are isolated. For example, older people used to go to the Cork College of FET Millstreet Centre to sing but the funding for that was cut. It was a beautiful mental health support. It was not accredited and people did not get a certificate, but 30 of them showed up every week from across the constituency to sing. When people are talking to me about these kinds of thing in my constituency, it is hard for me to say that there is this much funding here but we are probably not going to see those services in our area because they are just not accessible to us. That is the point I am trying to get across, but I totally understand. I thank the Minister of State for her contribution.

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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