Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is an issue we have all been dealing with for the last number of years and we are well aware of it. I spoke to the Minister of State previously of a situation in Sligo-Leitrim, in CHO 1, where there are 280 children on the waiting list for CAMHS. That is almost 10% of the national figure. In most cases there is meant to be a multidisciplinary team in place. I understand the multidisciplinary team in the CHO 1 area is about 60% of what it should be. That is the case across the board and across the country. In many cases there are people working in these areas who do not have child-specific qualifications. That is another problem which is probably having its impact in much of these misdiagnoses and issues that come up for a whole range of young people. They go and seek help and families do their best for them, but they find they are up against a brick wall.

I recently had a family contact me. Their young daughter had gone to CAMHS and been diagnosed for a particular medication and everything was fine. She was supposed to be reassessed in six months. They rang and rang and rang but could never get an appointment. It was over a year before they got an appointment to re-examine the medication she was on. They were told to go to the GP. The GP said he did not diagnose and could not deal with it and that it had to be CAMHS that would do it. They continuously push people away rather than take them in. That is an issue across the entire country.

In the justice portfolio that I am in, I continually come across people who end up falling foul of the law because ultimately at a young age they did not get the early intervention they needed in mental health services. We know that and we all acknowledge it. Both Ministers are aware of it as well. However, we continually come back to this problem. We cannot recruit the people and we have all these issues.

Under the last Government we were here five years ago and we had the same problem. Five years later we are still in the same problems. Why was nothing done in those intervening five years? It is beyond belief that as a society we cannot put the effort in to ensure that we train an adequate number of people to deal with the problems we know are going to be in our society. We have not got the impetus in place to ensure we can have the medical professionals in place in our country to be able to deal with the problems we know we are always going to have. There is always going to be that percentage of people unfortunately who will need these services. We need to ensure that we put the services in place for them.

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