Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On CAMHS, I could not agree more. Youth mental health needed significant investment but it needed more than that. CAMHS is what we talk about most but we must bear in mind that it is for one in 50 children and young people who need mental health support. The other community-based supports are for the other 49 in 50. We must invest there as well. Specifically on CAMHS, the services needed more resourcing and investment. That is happening. Even though the new development funding was tighter this year than in previous years, the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and I made sure that funding was ring-fenced to fully staff up the CAMHS teams around the country. However, that is not enough on its own. The Deputy will be aware that the Minister of State and I were very keen for there to be a national clinical lead and a national operational lead, very much like we have for the national women and infants programme or the national cancer control programme, which work very well. We needed that in CAMHS and a really impressive lady called Dr. Amanda Burke has been appointed clinical lead.

She is a very experienced psychiatrist. We have had several conversations about what needs to be done and she is very clear about the need for capacity but also reform. For example, the teams around the country do not have standardised protocols that are available in many other specialties. They do not have the level of IT systems they badly need. They do not have the joined-up referral pathways they need in the way some other specialties have. The supports for the healthcare professionals to do the job they want to do have not been in place.

On the back of that, Dr. Burke met with the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and me. I and the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, asked her to come back to us with the programme of work Dr. Burke thinks is needed and we will fund it. So that the committee will be aware, of the €92 million additional new development funding we got in December, I have allocated a full €10 million to youth mental health, but with the main focus being on CAMHS. That is what will fund and grow out those services. If they need capital, obviously, we will give them capital as well.

We supported it through the waiting list action plan last year as well and more than 1,000 children got the treatment they needed and, therefore, were able to be removed from the waiting lists. We need to keep going with that. We need to keep going with the waiting list plan, which are short-term but important solutions, while building up the full service.

Unfortunately, the latest information we have is quite old because the Fórsa staff are refusing to provide waiting list information on the number of children who are waiting, which obviously makes it very difficult to respond to the needs of those children. I do not believe they should be withholding that information but they are.