Dr. Niall Muldoon:

It always ultimately comes down to finance and who will be the person who pays the bill, which ultimately means who will be the person who will sit in front of an Oireachtas committee and take the blame if anything goes wrong. There was an initiative in 2014 under Civil Service reform called pathfinder project, which was meant to create one office that would bring people from the Departments of Health, Education and children, specifically to address children's mental health.

That was funded three or four years in a row, agreed by all three Secretaries General, and has still never come to fruition since 2014. It was meant to be an initiative to show the Civil Service could be flexible. That never came to fruition for whatever reason.