Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. Any parent faced with the difficulties outlined will be very disappointed by it. Let me quote from the letter from the first parent I mentioned:

The consultant psychiatrist from CAMHS Castleknock has taken extended leave some 2 months ago, with absolutely no indication of a return date. This means no kids with ADHD, some barely able to read ... without the assistance and monitoring of extremely important medication are being seen/treated. They're ... being backlogged onto an already packed waiting list [this is basically what the Minister of State said to us in his rather complicated reply]. There has been no consultant at all with CAMHS Castleknock for this period. While Blanchardstown CAMHS sees kids with ADHD after a maximum of a year, Castleknock are working with emergency cases only because of this situation.

I know the mother who wrote the letter which also states: "So kids like mine have absolutely no idea if they’ll receive the urgent medication within the already unacceptable waiting time of a year."

The Minister of State said: "Opportunities to continue to develop services that will treat children and adolescents at the lowest level of complexity, thus avoiding the need for specialist interventions, remain challenging." When the IMF came to Ireland, when the country had collapsed, it used the word "challenge" all the time. When Sinn Féin sat down many years ago to work on the Belfast Agreement, I would say there were those who said it was difficult and "challenging". Very often bureaucrats use the term "challenging" when mentally putting up their hands and saying there is not an awful lot they can do about a matter. If children develop mental health difficulties that cannot be addressed, the problem may become more, rather than less, difficult.

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