Dr. Niall Muldoon:

We have had a small but consistent number of issues with mental health services, some of which relate to eating disorders. I mentioned earlier a young man who had spent months in a children's unit even though he was required to be admitted to a psychiatric facility. He also had an intellectual disability. That dual diagnosis is really difficult for people to cope with but he was the one who had to compromise. We compromised his care rather than find the suitable resources and way of doing it. There have been crises and public outcries over people sleeping on floors when waiting for units. Even when they are admitted to a unit, they will be just given a chair because there are no free beds. That is on us as a society and State.

The Chairman was involved in the previous committee on this issue. The mental health budget is miniscule. We examined the only figures we could get. Only 5.6% of the health budget relates to mental health. I have been through this with many people. We do not have a figure for how much we spend on children within mental health.

The best guesstimate I can come up with is that 20% of the mental health budget is spent on children, which means less than 1.1% of the overall health budget is spent on children's mental health. If we have a problem with resources, straightaway, it is an allocation, a decision or a choice as to where we ring-fence this. Even if we doubled the money spent on children, my guess is that it would make a huge inroad into those situations.

To me, the crux is to try to force the decisions of the Government so it cannot allow children to go into adult units any longer. It needs to provide quality, well-staffed inpatient units, as well as going downstream and helping with primary care and those areas as well.