Sorca Clarke
Question:710. Deputy Sorca Clarke asked the Minister for Health the workforce planning that has been done to estimate the number of additional mental health professionals needed by 2030. [35432/25]
View answerTuesday, 1 July 2025
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The Department of Health leads on health and social care workforce planning activities, including working in collaboration with the education sector, HSE, regulators, and professional bodies to improve the availability of health professionals across the entire health service. As part of this work, the Department considers the long-term workforce planning needs of the health and social care sector utilising a variety of workforce projections.
Department of Health officials engage on an ongoing basis with colleagues in the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that we train enough graduates with the skills necessary to support the delivery of health and social care services and to develop a strategic approach to workforce planning for the health, disability and education sectors.
Significant progress has been made working with the Higher Education Sector and Professional Bodies to increase the number of student training places to ensure that we have enough healthcare professionals to meet future demand for health services. Further work is underway with DFHERIS and other relevant Government Departments and the Higher Education Authority to increase the number of student places across all health and social care professions.
This government aims to enhance mental health services in local communities and to continue to recruit Mental Health staff both nationally and internationally.
For Health & Social Care Professionals, we need to continue on the recent expansion of this section of the workforce. Recent increases in student places will start to have an effect in the coming years and through enhanced funding and policy focus on areas such as community, mental health and disabilities, we will see a shift towards an integrated care model of care. The Programme for Government commits to doubling the number of college places for speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dieticians, psychologists and social workers.
Sharing the Vision (StV, 2020-2030) is Ireland’s ambitious, multifaceted national mental health policy to enhance the provision of mental health services and supports across a broad continuum from mental health promotion, prevention, early intervention and specialist mental health service delivery during the period 2020-2030.
Implementation of Sharing the Vision is guided by a detailed Implementation Plan, with regular policy implementation progress reports published on the Department of Health website. Implementation of the policy is overseen by an independently-chaired National Implementation and Monitoring Committee. The current Implementation Plan 2025-2027 for Sharing the Vision was published in April 2025.
The government is focused on achieving and maintaining optimum mental health in Ireland. WTE numbers in Mental Health increased by 7% between year-end 2019 and April 2025, with 97% of that increase relating to posts directly involved in patient care. The availability of suitably qualified workforce has been highlighted as a significant challenge at a time when there has been record levels of investment in mental health services with an increase of 43.7% over the lifetime of the last government and totaling almost €1.5 billion in Budget 2025.