Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-29 ============================================================ Mary Butler (FF), Waterford That is inaccurate. At 9.30 a.m., for example, I looked at how many suicide crisis assessment nurses, SCANs, we had in the country. I secured another 12 for this year and we have 22 in place. There are four SCANs in Cork. They are suicide reduction nurses who work with GPs. It is the only area in the country that has four SCANs. Dublin does not even have four SCANs. I visited the Mallow primary care centre and the CAMHS team there. There are 17 and half whole-time equivalents in the CAMHS team in Mallow. It has the most whole-time equivalents in any CAMHS team in the country. The thing about it is, I get out on the ground. I am good at figures and remembering things. That particular team I visited does not have the biggest catchment area in the country. They have the most staff in the country, but their waiting list is one of the longest. I went down there to visit that team to see what the hell was going on. That is the type of work I do every day of the week. I wear my heart on my sleeve in relation to mental health. Whatever job I do, whether it is Chief Whip, Minister of State with responsibility for mental health or a TD from Waterford, I work hard. I know what services are available all over the country. The Senator has social prescribing in her area, which is really important and does a huge amount of work. I cannot be responsible for an organisation that is not accredited. If an organisation is not accredited, there is something wrong. The governance is not right. The clinical governance is not right. The organisation is not right. There is a reason that somebody is not funded. A total of €107 million will be spent out of the mental health budget this year for non-governmental organisations, NGOs, that provide services all over the country. Jigsaw will receive €15.8 million of the budget this year. Pieta will receive €4 million of the budget. It is simply not true to say that the funding does not filter down. If the Senator looks at the funding going into Cork, I guarantee her the funding is filtering down. There were no cuts. The first day I stood in this job, the budget for mental health was €995 million. The budget this year is €1.6 billion. I have increased the budget year on year by 60%. The other thing I have done is to know every single whole-time equivalent post that I have secured this year. I will make sure that every one of them is hired and goes in and provided the services. I simply cannot listen about funding cuts because there is no truth in it. There are no funding cuts. Sometimes, people will not avail of supports. Unfortunately, we have that situation in relation to men, who will not always reach out for supports. I got a very good briefing this morning - I was up early - in relation to the new free counselling supports that I introduced last September for men. It was the first time ever that any man in the country could access free counselling supports. From 1 September 2025 to 27 January, 300 men reached out for free counselling supports for the first time. That is 300 men in four months. I am really delighted about that. I secured that as recurring funding - €1 million in recurring funding - to provide free counselling supports. This is Connect Counselling. Connect Counselling dealt with 68 cases. Seven cases it had to escalate up to counselling in primary care, CIPC. Those seven people were seen immediately because I was able to specifically fund it. I find it hard to listen to comments like that. Sometimes, not everybody is aware of where the services are and how to access them. If the Senator has any specific cases, I ask her to please send them on to me and I will try to help her with them. --- 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