Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is a crisis across the country in child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and the Government is asleep at the wheel as it unfolds. According to figures supplied to my colleague, Deputy James Browne, Fianna Fáil's spokesperson on mental heath, 6,181 children were waiting for primary care psychology appointments at the end of January, of whom 1,635 had been waiting for over a year to see somebody. Time is of the essence in dealing with children and teenagers. There is a very narrow window for assisting them, treating their conditions and putting them on a path to recovery. That window has been made even narrower for 1,635 children who have been deprived of opportunities that should have been made available to them. As a direct consequence, unfortunately, 81 children were admitted to adult mental health units across the country in 2017. Such settings are utterly and completely unsuitable for their needs and care programmes.

There are major difficulties in attracting staff to work in CAMHS. A staff complement of 1,237 is required for a full community-based CAMHS service, but figures supplied to Deputy James Browne show that just 657 staff were in place in 2017. If current recruitment trends continue, the full complement will not be in place until 2030,which is 12 years away. The futures of children are being put at risk, while the HSE dawdles. How many more thousands of children will lose out on treatment? How many more thousands of parents will have to endure intolerable stress? This is a nationwide problem. Every Deputy has dealt with the issue in his or her constituency office. I deal with it in my constituency of Mayo. It has been highlighted in counties Wexford and Waterford in recent weeks following Dr. Kieran Moore's decision to resign from his post as a specialist paediatric consultant. As he explained to the Joint Committee on the Future of Mental Health Care:

I am resigning from Wexford because it is untenable and unsafe. Two of my colleagues are doing the same.

Such a damning indictment by a hugely respected professional should serve as a wake-up call for the Tánaiste and his Government colleagues on the reality of CAMHS. What actions are being taken by the Government to address the crisis in it? What specific recruitment plans are in place to address the shortfall in the service? What does the Tánaiste say to the 6,181 children who are languishing on the CAMHS waiting lists and to their parents?

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