Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The House and the Deputy will appreciate that two minutes will not give me an opportunity to answer his questions or address the range of issues outlined.

There are 34 young people in the Carrigaline-Douglas area on the waiting list for psychiatry. That is what the HSE means when it could not justify taking on an additional psychiatrist in a full-time position. Instead, it is about the better utilisation of resources. I suggest to the Deputy that he engages with the head of mental health services and local management in the CHO 4 area. They will give him more detail rather than me trying to give it across the floor of the Dáil in two minutes.

The overall CAMHS waiting list has reduced by 20% this year across the country, including in Cork. It was done by introducing 134 psychologists into the system last year, on top of the existing infrastructure. It was also done by bringing in a lower level infrastructure which is catching people at an earlier time and preventing it from escalating. That is not a waiting list initiative which will see it shoot back up again. It is a structural reform with better organising what we do and how we do it and building lower level infrastructure. While we could continue to keep employing more psychiatrists, we need to pull back and look at lower level interventions and building that up. That is what we have done and it has worked. The figures have been independently verified. This year it could even be a 25% reduction. That is a significant reduction in any waiting list. More importantly and crucially, it is sustainable.

In my time in office, I have tried to ensure that everything we do is sustainable and replicated year after year. It is not about just throwing an extra €10 million at it this year to bring a waiting list down when it goes back up next year. It is about structural reforms such as the introduction of the phone line which has resulted in better alignment of services and appropriate referrals. Online counselling and psychiatry are sustainable solutions which will, while not building utopia, go a long way to fixing the system.

See this speech in context