Colette Kelleher (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have a brief comment. It is like groundhog day. We go round and round in a circle about the fact that we do not have psychiatrists in a service that we are determinedly saying has to be psychiatry led. In the meantime real people are not getting the supports. We had a heartbreaking letter from a family who had to take their daughter in absolute abject distress through a carpark to get to a CAMHS centre which did not have a consultant. They were told they could take their daughter back the road from Cork to Killarney, an hour's trip. This child was absolutely in extremis. Today, tomorrow, there are young and older people in extremis, while we talk about and try to fix the system which does not seem to be fixable.

I know that Professor Murray did his best today and perhaps we are not speaking to the right people but this committee keeps on getting pushed from Billy to Jack to Jane to Joe. Nobody is able to make the interventions that would mean that this child who needed to see somebody got to see that somebody as soon as possible. That is the problem. That is why we are so exercised.