Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to acknowledge the role of the HSE in bringing forward the project for the extension of Mallow General Hospital and the fact that there will be 12 beds available in the new extension there tomorrow. I want to acknowledge the project team, the contractors and the team at the hospital itself who have done a great job in bringing the project to fruition. It will have a massive impact on our community in north Cork and further afield.

I will stay with Cork and CHO 4 because this is the area I represent. This is the first time ever I have heard anybody from the HSE publicly acknowledge the issues with CAMHS. I want to acknowledge that. I have been around for a quite a long time. Whenever we sought to have referrals to CAMHS, it operated, to my mind, as a silo with no doors or windows. It was very hard to advocate for individuals and families. We have a major issue in CHO 4, with 720 children waiting for access to CAMHS. For people seeking primary care psychology services for mild to moderate mental health difficulties, I am not saying services are non-existent, but they are extremely difficult to obtain.

What words of comfort can the HSE give to people in the CHO 4 area? In fairness, the HSE is absolutely brilliant at replying to our parliamentary questions in supplying figures, which allows us to compare and contrast between CHOs but CHO 4 is arguably a bit of a basket case in terms of waiting lists. I am not being verbose about that and I contend that the lists in CHO 4 are always too high. I want to hear when we will see the new psychologists coming in and output from what our guests have told us here tonight. We have been told that a pilot scheme is being put in place, etc. but that will take some time but CHO 4 is in an extremely acute situation based on the figures that I have cited here tonight, which the HSE supplied. I need to give some comfort to the families whom I represent that there will be access to primary care teams for psychology services, in particular. Not very long ago one family, for whom I am an advocate, received a dual diagnosis that was non-addiction related for their loved one, so my experience of CAMHS is completely the opposite of what I have been told here tonight. The family was told very specifically that "No, you cannot have access to CAMHS." By God, we are fairly good at beating down the door when we need to and got access. Thankfully, the people who heard the case were reasonable but that is not the universal experience of people. We are a good bit along the road now. I understand that Mr. Gloster is in the job a relatively short time. To be fair to him, he has always been a straight shooter as far as I am concerned. I need to see more psychologists in CHO 4 and better primary care teams, CDNTs and CAMHS. The experience of the family interfacing with CAMHS needs to be qualitatively better and enhanced. We cannot wait for a pilot scheme to work, to see how the research is used and learnings translated. I contend that it needs to be translated now.