Dr. Amanda Burke:

I very much agree with that. Compared with international norms, our national prescribing rates are quite low. In some areas there is an argument to say we should be prescribing more. Notwithstanding that, the Maskey report made some specific recommendations in one particular area of the country. However, what we have seen come through in the national prescribing audit would not reflect the same as that. What can be seen is prescription in isolation. I would vary the terminology from overprescribing to prescription in isolation. I would never prescribe for a child if he or she did not need it. However, if I did not also have a psychological therapy available, it might look as if that is all I was giving. Unfortunately, we have waiting lists for psychological therapies because they are more resource intensive. We now need to focus our energy on making more psychological and talking therapies available. We have spoken about recruitment challenges in that area, but we do not have to recruit everybody. The HSE has looked at initiatives like SilverCloud in terms of how we can provide online evidence-based therapies to young people without having to go through what can be quite a long process in terms of recruitment. We will continue to look at that and buy in packages of care for young people in need of cognitive behavioural therapy or family therapy until we step up our own capacity.