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

My two minutes do not facilitate all that I should say. Mental health in Ireland has many connotations. It is broad-ranging and far-reaching and it crosses every boundary of age, gender and status, and defies adequate coverage by me here this evening. All I can say is I concur with all who have spoken before me.

We know we do not have enough funding currently, but I would like to come at it from a different aspect. Deputy Joan Collins spoke about the family resource centres. They play a significant role in the communities and supporting the counselling services there.

I also want to talk about something that has come through CAMHS and the National Educational Psychology Service, NEPS. I do not know whether the Minister of State is aware of this, but the operation procedure issued by CAMHS in June last, to which I referred on the last occasion I spoke here, states, "It is not the role of CAMHS to make recommendations that determine the provision of specific educational supports/resources as this is the responsibility of the Department of Education and the National Educational Psychology Service." I will translate what exactly that means. School principals tell me that this is a clause that is used as a cost-saving detour by ensuring that CAMHS psychiatrists are precluded from making recommendations for the services for children presenting with difficulties, be they ADHD, emotional behaviour disorder or autism. Their statements of fact would fall short of recommending a route to solutions in terms of school-based resourcing. Basically, there is a way of joining certain dots there in the schools and that is where we can get CAMHS and NEPS talking together. In fact, the teachers are the ones who can pull it together. Deputy Ó Laoghaire said it earlier. We need to engage with schools and we need to engage with principals because that is where we can start with a bottom-up approach.

Finally, last week I got a response from the HSE as to where we have come in the ten years of A Vision for Change. It recommends that we have 15.5 teams across the country looking after our children. Currently, as the Minister of State knows as well as I do, we have five based teams. That is what we have. They are currently recruiting another five based teams. Regrettably, it is not enough.

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