Mental Health Services
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-24
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Tom Clonan (IND), University of Dublin

I thank the Minister of State for coming here today. I very much appreciate that the line Minister of State is here to answer my Commencement matter.
I am here to talk about the national service model for the mental health of intellectual disability. I might explain that. Tens of thousands of people throughout the Republic suffer from intellectual disabilities. Many of these people live at home with elderly parents. There are 55,000 disabled adults over the age of 25 living at home with parents who are over the age of 60. A plan for the mental health of intellectual disability service was published in 2021 to establish teams around the country to meet the needs of this very vulnerable community and their carers. Since then, however, only one team has been set up fully with the proper complement of nurses, a consultant psychiatrist with higher specialist training in the mental health of intellectual disability, social workers, psychologists, occupational therapists, OTs, and physiotherapists. There is only one team - a pilot project in Cavan. Throughout the rest of the country, those teams are not filled.
I have been approached by a number of hospital consultants and executive clinical directors in the field of mental health of intellectual disability. I have also spoken to the chair of the faculty of mental health of intellectual disability in the Irish College of Psychiatry. They confirm that these teams are not fully staffed and are not funded. The HSE has said that the reason for that is that they cannot recruit allied health professionals, such as psychologists, social workers, physiotherapists and so on but that is not the case. In fact, the HSE is refusing to fund these posts. That is not the fault of the Minister of State, but perhaps she could encourage it to do so. In Cork, for example, there is a team and all it has is a consultant and executive clinical director. It has no social worker, no psychologist and no occupational therapists.
That is the fact of the matter today. Given the huge client base of hundreds of older adults with intellectual disabilities who are also particularly prone to mental illness, and in the absence of all of those allied therapies, what consultants have to do - it causes them moral distress - is overprescribe psychotropic medicines, which have very heavy side effects. When one consultant was able to get some psychology support and some OT support, they were able to get one intellectually disabled adult out of a wheelchair and walking again. Another disabled adult has been able to be titrated from a heavy psychotropic medicine to the stage where she can now feed herself. Another disabled adult, having been de-prescribed because of access to these supports, has been able to take up full paid employment in the community. Here is one of the saddest examples: a family reports that an adult with an intellectual disability has recovered her personality and has a sense of humour again. When we think of those parents getting older and being terrified about what is going to happen to their children, the least we can do is fully fund and staff these mental health of intellectual disability teams throughout the State.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-24