Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I fully agree with the Deputy that the current situation is not acceptable. It was not acceptable before Covid and Covid made it worse. In answering the question about CAMHS, we have to broaden out to mental health. I know the Deputy focuses on this area, so he will be aware that CAMHS is for children facing the most acute problems. As the psychiatrists point out to me, part of the solution to difficulties with CAMHS is more psychiatrists, although many are in place, better supports for the psychiatrists we have, and better integration of the multidisciplinary teams. The Deputy has supported the appointment of the assistant national director for youth mental health. Those protocols are now going to start being put in place, but that is only one of the issues. Another is that we need to hire a lot more people. I do not have the exact numbers with me and I hope the Deputy will forgive me if they are wrong but, from memory, the mental health workforce increased by in excess of 400 people last year. I believe that is what the increase was. If I may say so, this is partly because the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and I made it known that an awful lot of funded positions had not been filled for a very long time and that, if we did not start seeing some action on that, we were going to move the funding to other parts of the service where people could be hired. Astoundingly, we saw an awful lot of recruitment activity happening very quickly after that. That is welcome. There are hundreds more staff in place around the country.

An idea the Deputy has talked about a lot and on which the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is very keen is that, while we need CAMHS to be bigger and while we need to support it more, a lot of the solution lies in youth mental health. In my constituency, there are referral pathways for things like counselling and other mental health supports before a young person needs psychiatric support, which is obviously for the most severe cases.