Reverse the ill-advised decision to cut State’s mental health budget

I was listening, half-distracted, to the televised contributions from the various political leaders in the run-up to the vote for Taoiseach. 

All the speeches were impressive, unsurprisingly, as each speaker had rehearsed his/her spiff for the occasion. But I still found my attention wandering as they spoke. Even the most eloquent voices seemed to be just droning on and on. And we’d heard similar speeches during the three previous votes for Taoiseach.

But then Clare Daly rose to her feet and it was if a thunderclap had shattered the humdrum business-as-usual atmosphere of the chamber.

Instead of adding to the predictable rhetoric of the previous speakers, she directed the attention of the other 157 TDs, and a huge TV audience, to the stark, heart-rending reality of what’s happening outside the bubble of Dáil Éireann.

Yawns turned to tears and apathy to intense consideration in many a household as she read the letter from the sister of a woman who had taken her own life in response to pressure from financial institutions. Sadly, the case she cited is just one of countless, unspeakable — and potentially avoidable — tragedies that have convulsed households nationwide.

There are laws against harassment, yet a bank can phone someone up to 30 times a day and send warning letters to a person every two or three days.

Officialdom needs to awaken to the consequences of inhuman policies and unnecessary crass red tape. Vulnerable human beings can only take so much. Sure, financial institutions are in business to make money, but a little human decency doesn’t cost the earth.

Thankfully, awareness is growing of the tragedy that is suicide, and it was heartening to learn of the more than 120,000 people who turned out at venues nationwide for the annual Darkness into Light walk in aid of Pieta House.

But this increased focus on what has rightly been called a “permanent solution to a temporary problem” needs to be matched by a determined and compassionate approach by our political establishment. It needs to be mindful that this is quite literally a matter of life and death.

The cutting of €12 million from the State’s mental health budget for 2016 wasn’t just unhelpful. It was and remains a national scandal, and those behind it should hang their heads in shame.

One of the first actions of the new “Partnership Government” should be to reverse that ill-advised decision. That so-called reallocation of funds was surely, to quote Shakespeare, the “unkindest cut of all”.

John Fitzgerald

Lower Coyne St,

Callan,

Co Kilkenny