Mr. Ger Reaney:

That waiting list is not acceptable. There are factors around it. In particular, we have had a number of consultant vacancies. As we fill one vacancy another person retires. This has had a significant impact along with the high number of referrals. Ms Glennon will go through some of the steps we have in place for the short term, medium term and longer term, which we believe will address those waiting lists. These will also address the family therapy issue.

The Senator made reference to people falling through the cracks and to the silos. I will address these points separately. The Senator spoke of her own background in the intellectual disability services. This is an area for development for us. We have appointed a relatively new intellectual disability team over the last two years to support the consultants who are already there. We are also in the process of recruiting for a similar post in Kerry. We are aware that there is work to do in the context of how that team works closer with the agencies to build on the existing relationships and to ensure there is a consultant and staff assigned to each geographic area. We are currently working through that with our teams.

On the issue of needs of people over the age of 65 who have dementia and Alzheimer's, we have developed the psychiatry of old age team. Cork and Kerry would traditionally have been quite strong on general adult community mental health teams, and not so strong on specialist teams, including mental health teams and psychiatry of old age teams.