Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I have no doubt that the service to which the Deputy refers is an excellent one and doing an exceptional job. The difficulty from our perspective is that we need to provide an exceptional service in all areas of the country. We hope to do this by means of the community mental health teams which, in combination with primary care teams, will give us a bigger bang for our buck. While I acknowledge that groups such as Genesis provide an excellent service in particular areas, we must ensure a service is delivered to everyone. That is our objective. It will be a nationwide service. I am confident that the expertise of the Genesis service will be well utilised because additional personnel will be needed to staff the community mental health teams. We need to be cautious about saying young people with mental health or personal difficulties automatically end up in prison because that is not necessarily the case. I have no doubt that Genesis is providing an invaluable service.

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