Emergency Mental Health Services: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-27
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Sorca Clarke (SF), Longford-Westmeath

I welcome that the Government is not opposing the motion but the Minister of State and her colleagues need to act, and act much more quickly than they have to date. At the current rate it will be the mid-2030s by the time we reach the target under Sláintecare. People in crisis cannot wait that long. We are going to lose people. People are going to lose quality of life between now and then. I have heard the lack of service provision being described as "gaps" throughout this debate but these are not gaps but black holes of absolute service deprivation. In some areas services simply do not exist. A "gap" gives an indication this is something that is easily fixed but it is not as there is nothing there to link up in some areas and it is grossly unfair. We cannot keep sending people to emergency departments and calling that care because it is not. Those people should never be in emergency departments and would not need to be there if the proper structures were in place in the community, if we had suicide crisis assessment nurses and ring-fenced investment and if we as a State examined every possible potential specialist and activated each and every one of them, from our community therapists to our psychologists, our psychiatrists and our wonderful staff who are already in the mental health services. Each and every one of them needs to be activated.
The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, spoke earlier about the suicide rates and four in five suicides being men. I do not believe in pitting one area of need against another. I do not believe in pitting one geographic area against another. However, when we speak of suicide and of mental health there is a group of people we do not recognise enough and they are the people who make the badges. It is the people who are not charities, are not NGOs and are not linked in formally with any structure of the State. I am going to be parochial here, which I very rarely do in the House, but I want to acknowledge on the issue of men's mental health Blue Balls Ireland, Blue Balls Midlands, Blue Balls Bull Wall and the newly-formed Blue Balls Wicklow. They do tremendous work and they are community-driven and grassroots-led.
One thing has been very clear across every contribution this evening, which is that the current system is not working, that it is failing people in need and that it is failing the people who work in the services as well. I ask the Minister of State to act on this motion rather than just not opposing it.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:01+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-27