As the Taoiseach is aware, for many years people with mental health issues have been attending emergency departments in our hospitals. Many of them get very poor outcomes. They experience long delays and end up on trolleys. Sometimes they are referred for short-term stays or to community services, which offer little or no service. Recently, the Government has decided to put special mental health nursing teams in place in a number of hospitals. That is very welcome. However, a lot of the hospitals have been left out, including Sligo hospital in the north west, where large numbers of people with mental health issues attend the emergency department on a regular basis. These individuals can be in a very distressed state and do not get an adequate service. When will this be rectified? When will this service be extended to all hospitals, including Sligo University Hospital?

As part of budget 2026, €15 million in additional funding was provided for a crisis response. We are starting with ten hospitals, namely nine model 4 hospitals and one model 3 hospital. The model 3 hospital is the Mercy hospital in Cork, which had 1,200 presentations last year. Teams of nurses will be put in place to help non-consultant hospital doctors during out-of-hours periods. What I hope to do, with the help of the Minister, in budget 2027 is expand it to the model 3 hospitals. Sligo is very lucky because it has one of the six crisis resolution teams in the country. It also has the crisis cafe. I visited the hospital recently. It has a state-of-the-art department of psychiatry. My intention is to roll this out to model 3 hospitals next year.