Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Minister of State, Deputy Helen McEntee, all the best in the future. I will continue on from where Deputy Fleming left off. It is a journey.

When we speak of mental health, it has many connotations. It is a broad ranging and far-reaching concept and crosses every boundary, including age, gender and status. It defies adequate coverage by me in my two minutes and 49 seconds here this evening.

It would be wrong of me to start without saying I did not agree with the sidelining of the €12 million from mental health services when I first entered the Dáil a number of weeks ago. I felt it was very wrong, as did many Members. Let us hope for a more positive working relationship right across the Chamber so we can deliver to all, young and old, across the country. Protesting groups, such as the Union of Students in Ireland and Mental Health Reform, are indicative of the sectors in which the cuts are having a direct impact. These include the young, the elderly, adolescents and those going through university, the adults of tomorrow. Also included are young families, the highly qualified unemployed, the poorly paid, those in JobBridge, the homeless, the evicted, the indebted, the new poor, the casualties of the Celtic tiger, the marginalised and the disempowered of society. In the words of Dr. Harry Barry, there is no joined-up thinking and the disconnect between government and reality is alarming while the crisis of suicide is escalating.

As Front Bench spokesperson on children and youth affairs, I want a bottom-up approach and early intervention. I want us to start with the children. This is where it all begins. If we work with CAMHS, start out in the community and the preschool service, get relevant people into the schools and support the parents and teachers, we will actually be cutting out the problem from our queueing systems in hospitals.

In 2014 in east Galway, from where I come, we lost St. Brigid's. There was an outcry over its loss. We channelled all the people with mental health issues into University Hospital Galway where there is a 250-bed unit bursting at the seams. It cannot cater for this. There are people presenting at the accident and emergency unit in University Hospital Galway with psychiatric needs but it is not the right environment for them. Having gone that far into Galway city centre, they will already have sat for an hour in traffic. If one has come to Galway from Coose, which is on the boundary between counties Galway and Clare, or Portumna, which is on the border between counties Galway and Tipperary, or where Deputy Eugene Murphy is from, off down in the bowels of Roscommon, one will have been in the car for two hours, and one might be on medication. We have to think of the person driving the ill person. The latter are probably undergoing psychosis or having hallucinations. They sit praying to get to their destination. When the patient arrives at University Hospital Galway, he or she must then sit in a queue in the hope of gaining access to a bed.

What really frustrates me - I did not realise this until a number of weeks ago - is that neither department talks to the other. The rooms in the psychiatric part do not feed into the overall governance.

My last point is on youth. The standard operational procedure issued to CAMHS last June clearly set out that it is not the role of CAMHS to make recommendations that determine the provision of specific educational supports or resources as that is the responsibility of the Department and the National Educational Psychological Service. I want the Minister of State to find out why two Departments are making the decision? Children have to be assessed twice. This is clogging up the whole system and it is really frustrating to parents.

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