Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last week, I said that there should be a step change in Government policy around how we deal with children and adolescents in the context of mental health.

This should be a watershed. It should be a moment in time when we say we can no longer allow our services to be so depleted and exhausted that so many people go without and those to whom services are provided receive, in some cases, services that are dangerous. However, I am not convinced that is going to be the case. I am not convinced that the Government is actually going to change direction in any way.

Deputy Cullinane rightly outlined all the other scandals, including the Grace scandal, by which we were appalled and which we thought should be watershed moments. He mentioned the Brandon report that the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, wants to be published, but which she somehow cannot get the HSE to publish in order that the families can see what happened to the 18 individuals involved in that setting. If you go back years and years, you will see more and more of the same, yet we trundle on without accountability and without real change. All the people out there who depend on these services, namely, children and adolescents suffering with their mental health, are seeing that the State is letting them down in the main.

We do not provide enough money to support our services. We do not provide 24-7 services. We do not have clinical oversight at a national level of these services. My colleague, Deputy Ward, has been championing this since he was elected to this Chamber but yet again Government fails to act. I have spoken to many young people who have mental health difficulties. I have spoken to people who have been in facilities in this State due to eating disorders, anxiety and other issues. They see very clearly that more needs to be done for them and their cohort. This needs to be a time when we are not coming back here next year and saying only 1% of the health budget is provided for children's mental health or that we have 71,000 children on waiting lists for life-changing treatments, including mental health services, speech and language therapy and dietetics or that we have 3,000 children on CAMHS waiting lists. All of those are statistics of shame and there should be no more. If we are to really honour the people who surround us here tonight then we need to ensure we treat all the children of the nation equally. That means providing them with that helping hand. When they reach out for a helping hand from the State, there should be somebody or some service there to support and protect them. At this point, the service is not up to standard and in many places, it does not even exist.

See this speech in context