The Government has announced that an additional €500 million is to be spent on the health service this year.

Welcoming the revised estimate for 2016, the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, said that the money would address financial pressures in the service, while also allowing commitments made in the Programme for Government to be met.

"I am pleased to say that as a result of this announcement I am confident that we will have confirmed funding for a winter initiative to help address overcrowding in Emergency Departments. As an integral part of this initiative, I will increase resources for home care services.

"I can also confirm that the revised estimate will allow us to restore the full ring-fenced mental health budget and provide more funding to school-leavers with disabilities," Minister Harris said.

Earlier this year, €12 million that had been allocated to mental health was diverted to other areas of the health service because relevant staff could not be recruited. This move was severely criticised at the time, however as a result of this revised estimate, that money is to be restored.

"We are pleased to see the Government's decision to restore the €12M ring-fenced funding for development of mental health services in 2016, though this funding needs to translate this year into services on the ground in order to have an impact," commented Dr Shari McDaid of Mental Health Reform.

However, she insisted that in the context of a €500 million additional health allocation, €12 million ‘is a relatively small amount to restore to mental health'.

"The reality is that funding for mental health services in Ireland significantly lags behind best practice in other countries, for example in the UK where mental health funding is at approximately 11% of the overall health spend compared to just 6.5% here.

"The Government needs to make a commitment to increase the proportion of the health budget allocated to mental health on an ongoing basis," Dr McDaid said.