Dr. Brendan Doody:

There are particular challenges in south Dublin in recruiting and retaining staff, and those may be issues that are not necessarily linked with the services themselves but more with people's personal circumstances. That is one issue, but overall one has to be mindful that services need to be grown in a sustainable way or else skilled people will just move from one service to another. It is important that services are only grown at a sustainable level. There needs to be a proper plan for growing services in a way that AHPs in particular and other specialists who are required to staff multidisciplinary specialist teams are trained. The issue of physical infrastructure also has to be looked at. There is quite a significant timeline with regard to bringing inpatient services on stream from design to building and roll-out.

The Deputy must remember that with child and adolescent mental health services, the A Vision for Change document in 2006 made a significant change in that it recommended that the age range for such services be extended to 18. We were looking at services which up to then had been resourced for those under the age of 16. Effectively, a significant additional investment needed to be made. Over the past number of years there has been a significant increase in the number of teams and of staff on those teams. Some of that growth has been limited by the availability of skilled professionals but one needs to be mindful that there has been significant population growth also. Even though it may appear that there is investment and that new teams have been developed, one also needs to take into account that there has been significant population growth over that period of approximately-----