Dr. Aideen Brides:

I thank Deputy Ward; he has raised some very good points there. From a GP perspective, the only option we have is to give medication and we often know it is not the answer. As Professor Sadlier correctly mentioned, it is part of the answer and they work together. Where I am based in Monaghan, I have a 16 to 17-month wait to send a patient for primary care psychology. In Laois and Offaly, I think it is nine months. As the Deputy knows, if somebody has a problem that needs to be dealt with he or she is either cured or in hospital by that stage if he or she is going to access that service. Time and again we see patients who we know do not need to be seen by psychiatry but we have no other option. We send them for psychiatry because we are giving them medications that they do not necessarily need or that they might need in combination with psychology and other therapies but we just cannot access them. It is important that if we are going to look at mental health as a whole we start at primary care level and put in the other resources like the multidisciplinary team, MDT, psychology and other supports. This will filter onto secondary care and more time will be available for people who have specialist psychiatry illnesses to be seen. We can then deal with the issues that it is possible to deal with in primary care. It is a good point to make that it is not just one factor but is multifactorial.