Maternal Mental Health Supports: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-11 ============================================================ Anne Rabbitte (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach The principle of ensuring women can access timely, appropriate and affordable support following childbirth is shared across both Houses. In particular, access to mental health supports during the perinatal and postnatal period is critically important. This is an area where we must continue to ensure services are available when women need them. I acknowledge the Year of Care campaign and the advocacy work that has helped to keep postnatal care firmly on the policy agenda. It has contributed to an important discussion about how we structure services and respond to women’s lived experiences after childbirth. However, it is equally important to recognise the significant progress that has been made by the Government and particularly in recent years by the Minister of State. I recall the day she visited the Coombe, and how proud she was to be delivering the perinatal mental health supports and to be meeting the physicians and staff and hearing at first hand the lived experience. It is great to think that 3,300 people have responded to the report. What we are delivering is a response, hopefully, to their lived experiences. The national maternity strategy continues to provide a clear long-term framework for delivering safe, high-quality women-centred maternity and postnatal services. Under this strategy, we have sustained investment in staffing, infrastructure and models of care across maternity services nationwide. A key development has been the establishment, and Senator Cosgrove explained this, and expansion of the national postnatal hubs, which provide structured postnatal care in the community, including clinical check-ups, infant feeding support, physiotherapy, mental health screening and birth reflections. All I could think of when the Minister of State was reading them out earlier on was the parliamentary question that is going in for phase 3 to find out where they are going. I have no doubt that is the next question that will be landing in. Mental health supports have been significantly strengthened. Specialist perinatal mental health services are now co-operating with maternity networks, ensuring that women experiencing mental health difficulties during pregnancy and up to one year after birth can access specialist, multidisciplinary care. This is a substantial improvement on what existed previously. I know the Minister of State is rushing but it is important that she has the support of the senior Minister to deliver on her ambition and when it comes to capital funding because it is a team effort within the Department of Health and it is wonderful to have two strong women leading within the Department of Health. --- 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/2026-02-11/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:37+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-11