Ms Anne O'Connor:

Not necessarily, because the waiting list for psychology would cover children with all different types of needs. We know that, in terms of psychology, we have children coming in through primary care services and through our disability services. They are not necessarily children who would ever attend CAMHS. That is the grey area in terms of mental health with children. It is not as clean cut. Children who need psychological services do not necessarily need access to CAMHS. This is why we acknowledged that a number of years ago, as I said, and invested in the development of primary care psychology.

Ultimately, a model that we are aiming for and something that has been supported in terms of the vision, etc., is that children should be supported as close to their homes, their schools, etc., as possible and only when they really need a specialist service should they end up there. We have to build the supports for children at a primary care level. That is why, through enhanced community care, etc., and that whole approach from Sláintecare, we are trying to support children away from our specialist services. Ultimately, we would like to develop a range of responses that would see CAMHS business going down in a sense because we find children defaulting into CAMHS in the absence of other services being available to them.