Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Deputy that we are nowhere near where we need to be. As he rightly pointed out, we have four acute inpatient child and adult mental health services, CAMHS, units in Dublin, Cork and Galway. We have additional resources and facilities, which means we have 69 CAMHS teams.

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While I admit they are not all full, we need to get to a position where the teams are full and we have an adequate number of staff. If one looks at the figures it will be seen that the overall demand for CAMHS is rising. In January 2,325 people were seeking the service while in May 2,612 were seeking it. While those figures have increased, if one looks at the number of children admitted to the HSE adult inpatient units, in April there were 12 but that figure has now decreased to six. In that regard, we are moving in the right direction, but a lot of work needs to be done. Specifically, A Vision for Change is being reviewed. A tender has gone out to carry out that review, which I hope will happen by the end of the year. That vision has not changed. We need to start moving towards a more community-based model.

With regard to the Connecting for Life document, which specifically deals with suicide, there is a youth pathfinder project team which is dedicated to implementing the youth element of that. We need to tackle the youth element of suicide and the problems arising at a younger age because if one tackles them at an earlier age, they are less likely to become problematic later.

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