€11 Million Mental Health Investment Targets Youth Support and Counselling Access

If you’ve ever lain awake worrying about whether your teenager is coping, or quietly wondered whether the mental health support your child needs actually exists somewhere within reach, today’s announcement from Minister for Mental Health Mary Butler will feel significant. On World Mental Health Day 2026, the Government has confirmed an €11 million investment aimed squarely at early intervention, youth mental health and community-based talk therapies — and for parents, some of the detail is genuinely worth knowing about.

More Jigsaw services, closer to home

The headline measure for families with young people is an investment of €3.8 million to establish four new Jigsaw services. The new locations will cover Dún Laoghaire and counties Kildare, Cavan, Monaghan, Sligo and Leitrim. Jigsaw provides free, early mental health support for young people aged 12 to 25 who are experiencing mild to moderate difficulties — no long waiting lists, no clinical gatekeeping, just accessible help at a formative time.

Once up and running next year the new services will extend access to an estimated 135,000 additional young people, pushing national coverage from 75% to 90%. If your child is in that 12-to-25 bracket and has been struggling — with anxiety, low mood, stress around school or anything else — this is the kind of resource that can genuinely change things before difficulties escalate.

Minister Butler said: “I have been consistent in my support of Jigsaw, they are a key partner in enabling us to widen access to early intervention mental health services for young people. I know these new Jigsaw services will make an incredible difference to the lives of thousands of young people in Ireland.”

More counselling sessions, more people reached

The investment also includes a further €2.8 million for community-based counselling and talk therapy programmes. That funding will support the Free Men’s Counselling Programme and the Community Therapy Fund, bringing total recurring funding for those initiatives to €5.8 million annually and enabling the delivery of almost 60,000 free counselling sessions each year.

It’s worth noting what that Men’s Counselling Programme has already achieved. Since launching, more than 8,200 men have engaged with it — many for the very first time — with over 24,000 sessions delivered. Given that men aged 30 to 50 are most at risk of suicide and are statistically less likely to reach out, that figure matters enormously. If you’ve got a partner, a brother, a dad or a friend who’s been quietly struggling, this programme exists and it’s free.

The breakdown of new sessions to be funded includes:

8,000 more free counselling sessions for men each year
6,000 more sessions through Community Therapy Ireland member organisations, targeted at new clients including young people and LGBTQ+ people
10,240 sessions through the national network of Family Resource Centres
9,000 sessions through the HSE’s Counselling in Primary Care service

CAMHS, ADHD pathways and Social Farming

For families navigating the CAMHS system — and many of you will know exactly how exhausting that can be — there’s further investment of over €3.5 million to strengthen specialist care within Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. This includes additional clinical staff to establish a dedicated ADHD pathway and enhanced support for children with complex needs. The focus, Minister Butler’s office has confirmed, will be on children who have been waiting the longest.

There’s also €500,000 earmarked for Social Farming initiatives — a perhaps lesser-known but quietly brilliant model that gives young people attending CAMHS access to farming communities, helping them build confidence, social connections and a sense of purpose outside of clinical settings. Recovery doesn’t always happen in a therapy room, and it’s good to see that reflected in the funding.

The full package forms part of a record €1.657 billion allocated to mental health services in Budget 2027 — an increase of €108 million on 2026 and more than 60% higher than the investment made in 2020.

If you or someone you know needs support right now, you don’t have to wait for any of the new services to be in place. Visit yourmentalhealth.ie for information on free services available in your area. You can also text HELLO to 50808 at any time, call Samaritans on freephone 116 123, or contact Pieta on freephone 1800 247 247.