Mr. Michael Walsh:

Children do not vote and they do not get a say in where they are going or what they are doing. The parents do not get a say. The child needs to be in some form of psychiatric hospital and they deem that the nearest one is appropriate because there is no room at the inn in Cork. We try to admit to St. Patrick's and St. John of God on occasion but at present we have four patients on a waiting list to go into inpatients. There are no beds in the inn. The parents have to look after these children and we see them on a daily basis. A lot of our clinical time is taken up with reviewing just to make sure that they are safe. Instead of seeing new patients, we are still trying to make sure somebody else is safe. The committee asked about the stress on staff. That is a big stress on staff. It takes up a lot of our time. One tries to come up with different solutions to the problem one struggles with.