Member's statement: Mental Health: Investment
Member's statement by Mr Mark Durkan on .
- MLA
- Mr Mark Durkan
- Party at the time
- Social Democratic and Labour Party
- Date
- 13 October 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Mental Health: Investment
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5789427
Read the official Assembly record
Text
World Mental Health Day was at the weekend. We heard a lot of warm words about the importance of mental health, but warm words mean little when, for many people, the reality falls so far short. It took years for our mental health strategy to secure approval from the Executive, only for people to be told that there was no money to deliver it. Earlier this year, I exposed the fact that the Executive working group on mental well-being, resilience and suicide prevention had gone 18 months without meeting. Ministers were then basically embarrassed into having a meeting in March, but what happened next? One of the actions, if not the only action, decided on by Ministers at that meeting was to change the group's terms of reference and reduce its commitment to meet four times a year to just two. They went 18 months without meeting about suicide prevention, and, when they finally met, the first thing that they did was reduce how often they would meet in the future. How is mental health a priority? In 2024, 290 people were registered as dying by suicide across the North. How does meeting less frequently demonstrate the urgency and accountability that the crisis demands, never mind the duty to prevent the loss of even more lives and the devastation of even more families? Northern Ireland has higher levels of mental ill health than elsewhere on these islands but spends less per person on services: a higher level of need but less investment. Waiting lists are growing, services are overstretched and workforce shortages persist. This year, just 16% of the funding required to implement the much vaunted and most impressive mental health strategy had been spent. We cannot keep publishing strategies without funding them.
We must also confront the impact of our politics on mental health. Politics here should help to heal our society, not perpetuate its trauma, yet some remain determined to open old wounds, reignite divisions and drag communities back into painful experiences that they have spent years or decades trying to overcome. We can and should remember our past, but we cannot build a healthier future by continually reopening our deepest wounds. We need leadership that offers healing and hope, not division and renewed trauma. People facing mental health crises cannot afford to wait. They deserve investment, action and accountability, not empty promises. The Executive must stop talking about making mental health a priority and start acting like it is a priority.
414 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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