Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his answer. He mentioned HSE policy. The HSE is unable to plan. I question the Government's commitment. We do not have enough time to go through these issues. The Minister of State referred to 69 CAMHS teams. How many of them are fully staffed? I would not like to see a CAMHS premier league because there would not be too many teams playing against each other. It is not good enough to say this is a staffing problem. Surely we should have moved on over the past 12 months. It is a HSE problem and a Department of Health problem. It appears that the cost of getting staff to work in providing these services is too high a target for the Government. It seems to be afraid to spend money. The problem is that we are putting children at risk. When we, as legislators, put children at risk, it is not just their problem - it is our problem and the Government's problem as well. I reiterate that we should not try to fix something that has not been broken.

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