No-one proposed mental health cuts

Your editorial of Friday, May 20, claimed that “three senior ministers — Michael Noonan, Leo Varadkar and Brendan Howlin — proposed spectacular cuts (€35m) to the already modest mental health budget”. This is incorrect.

As I stated in the Dail, on Tuesday, April 26, the budget for mental health increased by €116m over the lifetime of the last government, from €711m to €827m, the largest increase of any service area within the overall allocation for health, in percentage terms. Budget 2016 provides for the mental health budget to increase by €52m, to €827m, a 6.7% rise, of which €35m was reserved for new developments in a full year.

The only matter that was ever hotly debated among ministers, in the run-up to the last budget, was the size of the increase in funding for mental health, and how that might limit additional funding for areas of equal importance, such as maternity care, cancer, paediatrics, disability and services for the elderly, given that it all has to come from the same pot.

No cuts were ever proposed by anyone at all, and to claim so is wholly inaccurate.

Leo Varadkar TD

Minister for Social Protection