Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming here today. I will try to be brief as possible as I have a lot to include in a couple of minutes. Listening to the presentations today, the two things that really get to me, and I do not envy the witnesses' job, which is an extremely difficult and challenging one, are CAMHS and teams. A soccer team has 11 players while a rugby team has 15. It goes on and on. We have listened to many presentations today and we have buckets that are half empty. We have buckets with no assets but we all have buckets. I have 11 or 15 buckets on my team. Can we get the breakdown in each CHO of how many CAMHS teams are actually there, how many are fully staffed, how many are understaffed and, more importantly, how many are overstaffed? There does not seem to be an over-emphasis on a common sense approach. We listened to one presentation from witnesses from CHO 3 or CHO 2 which said that one team is 118%. These are percentages. We want to talk about people and staffing, that is, psychotherapists, psychologists, etc. Why is there no common sense approach? If there are three people on a team that is overstaffed and another team is understaffed by two while another is short one person in the same CHO area, why can we not move people around? Is it down to contractual issues? Why are we over staffing some areas while we are told we cannot fill other areas?

The second issue that leaves me feeling really aggrieved is retention. We are talking about recruitment. The HSE seems to be very good hiring agency staff to fill the deficit and can afford to pay the agency staff more money than its own staff to fill the gaps. To me, this is criminal when it comes to wasting funds. Why can we not sit down with the unions and hash this out? I can understand on the consultancy side of it that it may be not a shortage internationally but probably the fact that we are so weak on recruitment because of the wages structure. My next point, which I have flagged with the Minister, goes back to teams. I will use Cork and Kerry as examples. If we need nine teams in Kerry and ten in Cork, why can we not fully staff them and show that it works? I know somebody has to lose out. I am just using them as examples. By fully staffing them, we will cut down on the stress within the system because everybody, even the nurses, are stressed. I have spoken to nurses who have left work crying. Surely we can harmonise the system where those who work in the system will stay in their jobs. Everything in these areas seems to be either half empty or half full so there is no harmony in any of these areas. They seem to be totally broken. Many questions arise. What is the level of decision-making in each area with regard to budgeting and even thinking outside the box? Have they the power to do that? Has anyone in any CHO area told the Minister "I'm short two to fill a full complement of a team and I think this will work"? Can the witnesses do that? These are hard questions. This committee is here to drive this on and assist them. Have any community mental health youth leaders been appointed in any CHO because there are major issues coming down the road with cyberbullying? This is another thing that will come up over the next couple of years so let us nip it in the bud.

I am conscious of time. How much longer do I have?