Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Dr. O’Connell said it exactly. It is recognising things as they are. We will say, and I agree, that we should be better at how we assess and gather information and that we have the databases and all the rest of it. However, let us be clear. We never prepared for secondary school on the basis of what we knew of the children coming through primary school. On some level, that is unforgivable and also daft. There is no defence for that.

It is not a huge body of work to even use the information that we have at this point in time and put it into a plan. If that needs to be refined, that is absolutely sound. What exactly are we talking about in respect of a database? It all goes back to that general idea that we assess quickly, we get a plan at certain stage, we then make sure the services are in play and we have a general notion of the information. As much as is possible, as people transition, we need to facilitate - whether that is employers, third level or even primary and secondary schools. We need to do something different in relation to the application process.

Then, even in accessing services, as much as we need a proper plan, workforce planning and to make sure we have enough people in play, the other issue is we cannot have this silo whereby it is said, “Sorry, you do not fall under primary care. No, you cannot access this particular service because this is part of the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS.” Really, those services are not offering it because they are completely under-resourced anyway, so therefore, they think, “Let us throw this over”. I am not even complaining. I understand that services that have limited resources are going to make bad calls.

Putting it together is a big body of work, but if we have legislation that underpins it, then at some stage we put a plan in place and we have the database and, after that, it is making sure we have the resources in place. At least, it will be fairly obvious, no more than what the piece of work we can do in the sense of putting a report together stating what is best practice, what needs to be done and what is not being done at this point in time.