Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Everyone will have heard that we have a fantastic new forensic mental health hospital in Portrane in north County Dublin. It involved a €200 million investment and it is the best forensic mental health hospital in all of Europe. I have visited it a couple of times. It is a job well done. It took a while to get it opened, but all of the patients from the Central Mental Hospital were transferred safely, securely and without issue last Sunday. They were relocated with the minimum amount of fuss and the best supports that could be provided for them. The new hospital is good news.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of ADHD. It is an area on which I have focused. I launched the ADHD in adults national clinical programme on 14 January, 2021. I was struck to learn that many adults with ADHD did not receive diagnoses as children. I am referring to people who are now in their 50s or 60s and who have always felt that there was something about them and that they had fallen between the cracks. When the programme is fully implemented, 11 adult ADHD clinics will be established to provide assessments and multimodal treatments in the various CHOs. I visited the team in Sandyford, which is one of the three ADHD clinic sites that have already been set up. Next, there will be four more in the CHO 7 area of Dublin, the CHO 4 area of Cork, the CHO 4 area of Kerry and west Cork, and the CHO 8 area of Longford, Westmeath, Offaly, Laois, west Kildare and Wicklow. The remainder will follow. Since becoming Minister of State, I have recognised that the clinics have to be built incrementally. We established three last year, we are establishing four this year and we will establish the others next year. Even if we had all the funding in the world to do this, we would not have the staff, so the clinics have to be built incrementally.

Last week, I was delighted to launch the ADHD app. Anyone can download it on his or her phone free of charge. It gives support not only to people with ADHD, but also to their family members, in understanding some of the side effects or symptoms. I was surprised to learn that there were 117 ADHD apps available, but this one has medical support. It is a collaboration between ADHD Ireland, the HSE and University College Dublin. It is a good app. I was interested to hear that it did not cost the sun, moon and stars. It is a valuable tool for any adult living with ADHD and is great to see.

Mine is a challenging brief, but all of those working in mental health services, older people and others who provide care give so much. I am proud of the fact that, during the Covid pandemic, 85% to 90% of all mental health supports and services were retained. This was not easy. Many of our NGO partners acted quickly to move their supports and services online. Some did so within four days. Yesterday, I launched the Samaritans' report. In 2021, 1,300 people per day were contacting the Samaritans for support. I was struck to hear that, in 2021, the Samaritans received 19,000 calls from prisons. They were in prison and probably extremely lonely. The Prison Service did well in keeping Covid at bay, but it meant that people were isolated and they had to stay in their own premises.

A great deal of good work is being done. I was delighted to be able to visit Peamount Healthcare. To touch on another matter, Huntington's disease is a serious illness. I compliment Bloomfield Health Services on all the work it does in this regard. It sought funding of €1.5 million from my budget, which I supplied. Bloomfield Health Services provide the most experienced and dedicated supports for people with Huntington's disease and others with acquired brain injuries. They have a real understanding of how difficult some neurological disabilities can be.

The Deputy was right about dual carers. There are people who care for older adults - their parents - while also caring for children with intellectual disabilities. This situation can be difficult for what I call dual carers.

Another area on which I have placed great deal of focus, especially in the context of dementia, is that of those living with Down's syndrome, who are susceptible to accelerated ageing and are at a higher risk of developing dementia. I often meet ageing parents who have adult children with Down's syndrome who are developing symptoms of dementia at, for example, 40 years of age. The main concern for the parents is what will happen after they die.

That is an area that has been given focus. The disability memory service provides specialist supports; I think it is in the Mater hospital. The worry for parents is that until their adult child gets a full-time placement, they cannot relax. There is a focus on this issue.

On waiting lists, we do well in psychiatry of later life. There is no waiting list, which is great. For adult mental health services, the waiting list is 12 weeks. We do not keep waiting lists; people are seen within 12 weeks. There is a challenge regarding child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. The waiting list is currently about 4,000. The waiting list in CHO 4 Cork and Kerry doubled in the past 12 months because of challenges in relation to the Maskey report on south Kerry. I am working with my team to see if we can put in place a dedicated waiting list initiative to reduce that waiting list. Early intervention is key, as the committee knows. Only 2% of children will need the support of CAMHS, but when a child receives support from a multidisciplinary team, it can be life-changing. We are running a waiting list initiative on primary care psychology targeted at those waiting more than 12 months. We have reduced it by 25%, but as quickly as we are reducing the waiting list on one side, more referrals are coming in. Cases are more complex and need more supports. Whether that is a fallout from Covid-19 or we are seeing more children being referred, we are acutely aware of the situation, with children being added to waiting lists on a weekly basis. I am a parent. The last thing any parent wants to see is their child being told they will not be seen for six, nine or 12 months. We do not want that to happen. On the Maskey report, the Mental Health Commission is doing a review and the HSE is doing an independent audit, which will provide a lot of information early next year regarding the 73 teams we have in place. It will give us invaluable data we did not have before. I thank the Deputy. I hope I answered all of the questions.