Mr. John Church:

It is a huge issue. How do you eat an elephant? First, I will directly answer the Deputy's questions and then I will develop my answers. Will there be a tsunami of mental health issues? Yes, absolutely. The issues we have encountered during Covid were on the rise anyway. Suicide ideation and anxiety were on the rise anyway. Life is different. It seems to be more challenging for children nowadays. Maybe it is the way we parent; I do not know. However it is a very tough environment for children growing up now. I will get on to budgets in a minute. To our last point about parent-child interaction, Childline is a confidential service so sometimes the only person or service children have a relationship with, in terms of their issue, is Childline. They cannot talk to their parents. All I can say is, on 27 March thank God we got essential service status. It meant the 220 volunteers across six units in Ireland could travel in and out. I shudder to think about that not being available. At least we were there, because we were needed. We went 24-7 with not only our telephone but our web chat and text service, which was very positive.

The Deputy asked about our e-therapeutic services as well. Funny enough, it dealt us a positive hand in that we were forced into piloting video therapy. All our 21 therapeutic staff were taken off the road and we went straight into video. Then we took the chance to do a pilot. All 468 children were put through this pilot and the results were comparable with face-to-face. That is hugely encouraging. We have presented that to Tusla already and we will present it to whoever wants to see it. To the Deputy's point, we are not throwing the rattle out of the pram. We are coming up with solutions. Another solution we introduced during Covid was an external service called SilverCloud. Members may have heard of it. It is a cognitive behavioural therapy, CBT-based online intervention. We have already taken 70 children off the CAMHS waiting list. There were 2,700 on that list waiting 12 months. We are running the pilot. Not only are the children coming through very well, the parents are coming back to us - because they are involved - and to our point earlier about getting parents involved, they are saying they are noticing a difference. We are saying now to Government we have got solutions within our infrastructure and we have got the capacity to see four times the number of children per day than we would face-to-face, with similar outcomes. Members may ask how that is the case. We are operating in the environment children are used to. Children are living online. They are used to texting, chat and video. That is their environment. We are coming into their environment instead of forcing them into a face-to-face environment.

Suicide ideation was always on the increase. Self-harming is always an issue. We would often have instances of people self-harming on the call in the middle of the night with a volunteer. It is the only place in the country they can go.

There is nowhere else open except accident and emergency and hospital. At least we are open 24-7. We get only 30% of our funding from Government but to back up the Deputy's point, and I have said already, we are coming to the Government with solutions. We would like to come with solutions. We have an infrastructure that has taken 30 years to build up with Childline and we have committed volunteers. We are now going online and we can see four times the number of children with similar outcomes. That is a good starting point in eating the elephant.