Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for giving me the opportunity to raise this very important issue. I have just attended a mental health launch by the Joint Committee on the Future of Mental Health. It was shocking to read the committee's report. According to the HSE's health capacity review, Ireland's hospitals need at least 2,600 new beds in the next 15 years. The review goes on to say the number could jump to 7,000 if HSE reform is not prioritised. There is no reform. It was also reported last year that more than 2,400 children were availing of child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. At the same time, Ms Anne O'Connor, national director of mental health with the HSE, made the astonishing claim that the problem is that CAMHS takes everyone because there is nothing else. Imagine, the director of mental health in the HSE said that. We should let it sink in. There is nothing else there. Ms O’Connor went on to say that in an ideal world the first step for a young person presenting with a mental health problem would be to get help in school and go to his or her GP to get access to primary care-based psychology or family counselling services. She said the HSE’s mission was in fact to keep people out of CAMHS. At every point of intervention described by Ms O’Connor, there are profound and systemic failures. Primary care, GP services, school-based solutions and family counselling services are all in near total disarray despite the heroic work of the front-line staff involved. The most recent report I have indicates that almost 220 children have been waiting for more than one year for access to CAMHS while at least 70 posts across CAMHS teams nationally remain unfilled. Meanwhile, the HSE continued to recruit all through the recession with three out of every four recruits being managers and pen-pushers. There is something rotten in the HSE when 70 posts in CAMHS are left unfilled nationally. According to the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland, at 6%, spending on the delivery of mental health supports in the context of national concerns on this issue remains scandalously low, particularly when compared with the UK at 12% and Canada and New Zealand at 11.5%.

There are a number of young children in my constituency who are incarcerated – I have to use that word – in South Tipperary General Hospital. I could name them - a Boyle girl and an O’Brien girl from Carrick-on-Suir. The parents have contacted me, particularly those of the Boyle girl. I apologise, she is a Kennedy and a 14 year old. This is her tenth week in a children’s ward in a general hospital where she is getting no treatment. It will be her 11th week on Monday. That is frightening, shocking and appalling. If it was a war situation, the Government would be hauled in for war crimes. It is a totally unsuitable setting. The nurses and other staff are doing their best but her mother or someone else has to sit with her all night and on a 24-7 watch. She is waiting for a bed in Cork University Hospital, CUH, or somewhere else. It is appalling. I have raised this with the Taoiseach over the past two weeks. It is the same with the O’Brien girl. She is 13 and has also been waiting several weeks. There have been four or five others over the past six to eight weeks in the same situation. These are adolescent girls. They are nearly adults but they are in a paediatric ward which is totally unfit and they are getting a small level of treatment each day from CAMHS. It is pathetic and disgraceful.

I attended the report launch today and heard consultants talking about the matter. I saw the sheer frustration felt by everyone present because of the inertia and lethargy of an inept and uncaring HSE. It must be disbanded in order to allow people access the services to which they are entitled. It is despicable to have these children in a ward that is so overcrowded. Those beds are needed for sick children. These young adults must not be left to languish in these conditions in a hospital which is unfit to deal with them. They need specialist treatment and they must get beds somewhere else. Something has to be done about the HSE in order that sense will prevail.

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