Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The development of child and adolescent mental health services is a priority, and has been, for my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, and the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar.

Just to put it in context again, notwithstanding the severe financial difficulties that the country found itself in at the time of the last election and from 2008, an additional €125 million and some 1,150 posts have been provided for mental health services since 2012. The Deputy will also be aware that there has been an ambitious programme of investment in capital resources and improvements, including the opening of new mental health facilities and the opening at a local level right around the country and that people can see at the moment of large numbers of primary health care services. Central to the provision of the primary health care centres has been the actual provision at a local level of mental health services, including mental health services for children and adolescents. That, of course, is the setting in which we would like to see children and adolescents who experience mental health difficulties receiving the care, the counselling and the other services that their conditions may require. In fact, seeing children hospitalised would be, I think, for most professionals in the field the last resort and only in cases where it was possibly the only way of helping a child or an adolescent in very severe difficulties.

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