Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----to improvements for lone parents and increases in the child dependent allowance, including further improvements that will kick in during March, presuming that this House supports the social welfare legislation. Levels of child poverty remain far too high and there is more to be done, including further increasing employment, focusing on households where there is low work intensity, improving people's incomes and continuing to reform and improve our welfare system

With regard to CAMHS, the Deputy will know that under our mental health services as of September 2018 there are some 10,000 staff. In the past six years 2,000 posts have been approved, of which 1,500 have now been filled. The budget next year for mental health will be €1 billion, which is the biggest budget for mental health in the history of the State. We have difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff. All countries in the world have difficulties recruiting and retaining staff currently because there is a shortage of these people. It is not the case that there are huge numbers of unemployed qualified staff looking for jobs here or in any country. There is a huge shortage of people with these skills and it is a problem for our next door neighbour, for almost every country in Europe and for every western country. We are managing to add to the staff, with 1,500 extra staff in six years, as I said, and with 114 assistant psychologists and 20 psychologists being hired recently. This will help us to focus on especially complex cases. The Deputy will also be aware of the expansion of the Jigsaw services.

It is noteworthy from the Barnardos report, which is worth studying, that currently there are 2,621 children on the waiting list for CAMHS, waiting to see a mental health professional. For speech and language services, over half of the children are waiting fewer than 16 weeks. I do not know the figures for mental health but it is quite possible that more than half could be waiting fewer than 16 weeks, but it would still leave more than 1,000 who are waiting more than 16 weeks, which is not acceptable. The Barnardos report also shows that the figure for those who are waiting a very long time, for more than one year, has actually fallen by 15% in the last year, out of 327. The report also shows huge regional variation, which concerns me. Unless I am mistaken, the funding and resourcing is roughly the same across the different regionsper capita-----

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