Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a very important debate, especially as we come out of the pandemic but also in the context of what we are hearing in regard to the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, throughout the country. We know as Deputies there have been long-term problems with CAMHS for many years. If anything, this is an opportunity to step in and make the changes that are needed in the long term.

Back in July 2020, the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response met with Jigsaw and other stakeholders to discuss the mental health impact of the pandemic and we heard about the hardship young people are experiencing, primarily because of their isolation, their disruption from school and the isolation from their friends. We discussed the pressures they were under in going back to school, and the leaving certificate pressure in particular. This is one that continues to this day, and we need a resolution on the leaving certificate for this year because this group has been disrupted just as much as groups before them.

I would like to highlight one group of young people in particular, namely, those with epilepsy, who need a backup system for the leaving certificate. If they have a seizure immediately beforehand, they are often required to repeat the whole year to do the exam. It is very important this is resolved.

More specifically in my role as spokesperson for equality for Fine Gael, I have raised an ongoing particular concern about the mental health of young people in the LGBTQI+ community. I am thinking of young people, in particular, who were living at home throughout the pandemic, who did not have their usual outlets for seeing their friends, and who may or may not have come out. If they had come out, they may not have been welcome, as such. They may have lived with particular difficulties where that had not been accepted by their family. That is a very important issue.

I also want to note the ongoing Government commitment to ban, as France did yesterday, conversion therapy. That is a commitment in the programme for Government that I know is being worked on. It needs to be cemented and just simply done.

I also want to highlight the particular mental health challenges and access to services for young people in the Traveller community and for those in direct provision who, in addition to having other structural difficulties through education, which we know of and have spoken about in this House, are also othered or bullied in different ways. It is important that access to services is made particularly easy for them where there have been additional documented difficulties.

I met with a group today about online safety. I am aware the legislation on the online safety commissioner is progressing through the House. It is essential, however, there is a complaints mechanism within that legislation and that it is clear to young people who are flagging problems of bullying and other abuse material that they can see this can be addressed and redressed through that mechanism, and that when they flag problems, they will be taken seriously and addressed.

A gentleman in my constituency contacted me recently in the wake of the tragic death of Shane Lunny to share his own story, which involved at least one hospital visit where, while he sat in the hospital on suicide watch, he literally had to beg for support to be committed to the psychiatric ward. He was discharged at 1.30 in the morning with no money and nowhere to go. Following that, at just 21 years of age he ended up in a treatment centre for addiction issues, which is something. Now, having been three years sober and with those difficult days behind him, it is hoped, he still has a daily struggle with chronic anxiety. Despite that, he considers himself one of the lucky ones because he had been able to access appropriate treatment when he ultimately needed it, albeit with the difficulties he had when initially going into hospital. He is exhausted from battling mental health issues while having to continue to fight and advocate for himself and to navigate long waiting lists along with the financial issues that come with going private and being out of work because of mental health issues.

This is not an acceptable standard for our country and I do not believe the Ministers of State in attendance believe that is the case either. I know of the Ministers of State’s commitment to resolving this. The State has done very well in many different ways, with political and economic stability and recovering through the pandemic, but mental health is one of those areas which we have never got right. We have an opportunity to change that now and to put the investment into it. As my colleague. Deputy Dillon, said, this pays for itself over time. Whether it is perinatal or youth mental health, we know there are particular moments of vulnerability in people’s lives and we know the impact of failure to catch and treat these. Youth mental health is especially acute and important. We are becoming much more aware of that as a community, as a society and as a Parliament. I wish the Ministers of State every success in what I know is their completely committed work to try to resolve as much as possible for our young people.

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