Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)

How can we help people who suffer from mental health problems? Like everything else, we have to start at the start with early intervention. The biggest problem we have with early intervention is that services for early intervention are not available. Where they are available, people will wait for 18 months or two years. Some of the people who have come to us looking for help move into the adult bracket before they can get early assistance. More and more younger people with mental health issues are coming to us looking for help. Early intervention could help them. An awful lot of this is due to the pressures coming from mobile phones. Young people are exposed to an awful lot more than we were when we were younger. Through the Internet and everything else, they are exposed to an awful lot more and they have to deal with an awful lot more than what we had to deal with.

If we look at our upbringing, we had a simple life because we only saw what was on the television or heard what was on the radio. Nowadays, young people are interacting with people all over the world. That is an awful lot for a young person to process and understand and it can add to the pressures. Given that, why are early intervention services not being put in place? We need to focus a lot more on that to help children from a younger age rather than keeping them waiting, which puts pressure on families who are trying to care for their loved ones and are afraid of what can happen.

Many good friends of mine have committed suicide. With a bit of early intervention, some of them could have been helped. Many people from the generation ahead of me who suffered from mental health issues would be alive today if they had got help at the time. The statistics going back 50 years would show that. I know people who went to school with me and had yearly or ten-year reunions. Many of them say they have not lost anybody through mental health problems or suicide. However, if you talk to a child today, how many of them have witnessed this at an early age? That was not the case previously. Does that not suggest we must put things in place to help people at an early age? It would not only help people with mental health issues; it would also help the families of people who are suffering, no matter what is contributing to the problem. A lot of this can be attributed to inflation. Two people who are working and trying to put food on the table see there is nothing left at the end. They are fighting for their mortgages because of the inflated cost of housing, childcare and medical bills but because both of them are working and earning money, they qualify for nothing. This adds further pressures which creates more mental health difficulties.

The responsibility for ensuring services are in place to help children and adults lies with the Department. Why are they not available?

To look at this from the point of view of hospitals, I met nurses and midwives today who said there is a cap on additional resources but they need 150 more nurses. Imagine how existing staff are suffering as they do extra hours to try to cover what they have. There is a cap and staff tell us that for cancer patients and in oncology and emergency departments, the strain is being put on the workforce. This has knock-on effects, which are creating strain for families. This can lead to mental health difficulties.

The Minister of State is a mother. She has done a lot but there is a lot more that can be done in our Departments to make sure funding is put in place in order that the proper people ensure people can be helped at an early age. That is down to funding and resources but also infrastructure. If we do not have the proper infrastructure, we cannot do anything.

See this speech in context