Taskforce for youth mental health to get green light

A new youth mental health task force is to be signed off on at the Cabinet breaks for the summer today.

Cabinet is also expected to rubber-stamp plans for a separate taskforce to ensure people with disabilities are given a say in how money is spent on services they use.

The taskforce on youth mental health will include high-profile celebrity advocates and representatives of social media and broadcast media and will be chaired by Minister of State for Mental Health and Older People Helen McEntee.

She said: “It will be very much tasked with being an action group, so it’s not going to put together a report that is going to sit on a shelf — it will put together actual physical actions that can be implemented within communities.

“It will be made up of a variety from the Department of Children, Department of Education, Department of Health, you will also have a separate non-political element to it, you will have people who are leading in the particular fields.”

Disabilities Minister Finian McGrath will also bring forward plans which were first outlined in the programme for government.

Mr McGrath wants to introduce a “personalised budget” system which will give people with disabilities control over how money is spent to best suit their needs.

The move will be overseen by a new task force led by current KARE disability services chief executive Christy Lynch who has repeatedly campaigned for the de-institutionalisation of people with disabilities and may result in an official state agency being set up to address the issue within five years.

Separately, Government ministers will also be told today that they cannot ban any TD convicted of corruption from running again for a Dáil seat as such a block would be unconstitutional.

Due to advice from attorney general Máire Whelan, Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald will advise Cabinet to abandon a previous initiative to ban any corrupt TDs for up to a decade.