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

I fully agree with the Deputy. The Minister for Education and Skills is present and he will be responsible for rolling out the 400 hours of health and well-being classes in our schools, which are much needed. This is an area we must focus on more and develop further. Again, it means keeping our young people out of the mental health services and specifically out of CAMHS. When one looks at where the funding is going, one sees that 80% goes towards the specialist services which are dealing with 20% of our people. We need to start bringing more of those people into the primary care services under the primary care teams. We are developing these programmes outside the clinical specialist CAMHS teams so that young people do not have to go into the CAMHS.

We have also found, and this is a snapshot of the whole country and not just of the Deputy's area, that the number of people waiting under three months is over 1,000 but that the number has come down dramatically. The number of people waiting over 12 months has halved in the last two years. We have found that many of the people who are waiting up to 12 months are waiting for a diagnosis. The system has turned into one where if one manages to get a diagnosis, one finds one is able to access services or the supports one needs much easier. That is not the way we should be going. Sometimes there are young people in the CAMHS who do not have a severe mental health problem but they are left within the system for too long waiting for that diagnosis. That is something we are trying to address at present with the development of services through education, our primary care system and through the CAMHS.

I agree that we have a massive difficulty with the recruitment of staff for our CAMHS teams. Some of the teams are operating at less than 50%, which is not adequate. A body of work is being done at present to examine how we can bring in various other organisations or skills that will be able to work with our younger people who do not require specialist psychiatric nurses or the clinical teams. I will keep the Deputy updated on our progress.

See this speech in context