Dr. Amir Niazi:

Regarding the consultant posts, of the 73 CAMHS teams providing secondary mental health service, there is one post where we have an ongoing challenge to recruit a consultant. The post is in Kerry. It was advertised a few times and we know the reasons that post is not very popular. Other than that, there are two posts which are in the normal process of recruitment. People either retired or moved from one area to another. There is ongoing recruitment and we do not see a challenge filling those posts.

Other than general secondary mental health services or CAMH services, there are specialist services like eating disorder or mental health of intellectual disability, MHID, in children.

Yes, there is a challenge in the MHID area. We are all aware of that. We have increased the number of trainees at a high specialist training level to develop those skills and enable them to take up those posts. We have vacancies in that area. In addition, we are recruiting consultants for clinical programmes and other areas. That is an ongoing process.

Regarding multidisciplinary staff, there are issues in specific areas with filling posts at a senior grade in psychology and, in some areas, in recruiting other allied health professionals. Nursing is a challenge, especially on the east coast, where the cost of living and all those things make it very challenging to recruit to some of those posts. However, that is not specific to mental health. It is an issue overall in the health services.