Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Does the HSE accept the utter dysfunctionality within the CAMHS service? It is, at best, utter dysfunctionality and, at worst, putting children's lives at risk. We could all cite cases. I could cite a harrowing case that only happened last week where it took a father almost a fortnight to secure his child a place in a psychiatric unit. It meant that father had to sit in a hospital for three days and three nights with his daughter begging and pleading, and that he had to go public on Michael Reade's show on LMFM, which covered it on consecutive days. That is happening today, and it will happen tomorrow and the day after.

I have listened to the debate from the start. It displays a lack of credibility from the HSE officials as the people tasked with providing our public health service, when they cannot acknowledge there are problems. It is a case of, "We don't have an answer for this Deputy. We don't have those figures for that. We don't have this for that. We don't have that", and they divert and so on. Can the officials not acknowledge, because it would lend them some credibility at this stage, that the CAMHS service, as it currently stands, is not meeting its service requirements and is at best dysfunctional.