Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)

Varicose veins are allowed, and rightly so. I do not have a difficulty about that, but a child waiting two years for a psychiatric consultation will not be facilitated under the National Treatment Purchase Fund. We know that intervention at an early stage in psychiatric illness and emotional difficulties, especially among children, is vital to the opportunity for a full recovery, and that is not allowed. The Minister should examine psychiatric intervention under the National Treatment Purchase Fund because the longer someone is left without treatment, the more chronic the case becomes, the poorer the chance of recovery and the greater the later demands on the resources of the HSE.

See this speech in context