Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy Roche for all his advocacy on mental health. With regard to private care centres, I will give the Deputy a couple of examples. We moved the CAMHS team out of University Hospital Waterford into the Ferrybank Primary Care Centre because it is a much more suitable environment for young people. It has also made room available in the acute hospital. Similarly, in Clonakilty in west Cork, the CAMHS team moved into a community hospital where there was space on the same site, although it is in a separate building. We will use any opportunity we can.

I wish to mention something else, which will be important to the Deputies in that region. We have had a huge number of mental health presentations from the Traveller community to Portiuncula University Hospital. In the last year, there have been over 350 cases involving self-harm and suicide ideation. There are two SCAN nurses, suicide reduction nurses, something which has never been done with CAMHS, going into that particular area. When we get the data, we identify where there are challenges and we try to react in a timely manner. That is a very positive story for that number of presentations.