Gabrielle McFadden (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the first person to speak from the Government party I feel bound to stand up for the Government. The Government does not wake up in the morning and decide to make people's lives miserable by cutting the budget for mental health services. We are coming out of a very severe recession and these discussions are about seeing how we can go forward as a group, rather than giving out about budgets. I regularly speak in the House on mental health issues and the rights of people with disabilities and I have regularly spoken on the need for CAMHS services in the midlands. I have a 21 year old with mental health issues who was sent to hospital in an ambulance and sent home again in a taxi 12 hours later, at 10 p.m., so I know what everybody else knows.

My father used to talk about there being too many chiefs and not enough Indians and there seems to be an awful lot of managers. There seems to be an enormous lack of procedure and of joined-up thinking in the services, which would have led to the 21 year old child of whom I spoke being sent home in a taxi. There are not enough front-line staff nor enough psychologists or primary care teams.

Dr. Hillery spoke about retention and salaries. Can he tell me how the salaries of a psychiatrist and a psychologist compare? What about psychiatrists here and their counterparts in the UK? Can he also tell me what the figures are for retention in the UK as compared to here?