Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the four Deputies for raising this issue today. Deputy Collins raised it earlier as well. It was raised on Leaders' Questions because it is a very serious situation. I was informed on 11 May 2022 that due to recruitment challenges, the number of operational beds in the Linn Dara CAMHS unit was going to be reduced from 24 to 13 on a temporary basis. Deputy Costello is quite right that the most distressed cases are dealt with in Linn Dara. It is the most fantastic facility with a school attached to it with five teachers. It really is state-of-the-art. I cannot say why this happened five years ago as well but I can tell the Deputies what the situation is now.

No patient has been or will be discharged early from the unit. While the reduction in capacity will have an impact on waiting lists, the demand for inpatient beds in CAMHS units over the summer months is usually around half the normal level of capacity. I have the figures for the past four years and it runs at between 55% and 60% capacity but that still does not make it right. This regrettable situation has arisen because a number of nursing posts became vacant simultaneously at Linn Dara for various reasons. The situation is that there are 51 funded posts in Linn Dara and currently 24 of them are in place. To have a safe staffing perspective for those young people using the service, some of the beds had to be closed. As I said, it is not due to lack of financial resources but solely because the nursing complement available through the use of permanent and agency staff is no longer sufficient to continue to provide a full 24-bed inpatient service to a safe standard.

In reply to Deputy Ward's question, I have spoken to the HSE. I am not an observer. Far from it, I have never been an observer in this role.

I spoke to the HSE, the Department and the clinical consultant psychiatrist - the professor who runs the service. I spoke to him at length again yesterday. The situation is they have explored all possible options, which included redeploying staff from other child and adolescent mental health service, CAMHS, units or teams to Linn Dara, but if they are taken from the community, that impacts the community teams. They had agency staff in place and that worked for quite a time.

I asked the professor why he felt that they were finding it hard to retain staff, and not so much to recruit them, and there were several issues. The young people and children who are in this service are very complex cases and they need a lot of care. He said that many of the nurses who were working there were very young. Some of them have chosen to travel. Following Covid, the world has opened up again so that people can travel. Second, some of the nurses there had promotional opportunities within the HSE and they were promoted. Third, as the Deputies will be aware, it is quite difficult for people to find accommodation in Dublin. Those were some of the reasons cited by staff that they find it difficult.

At the same time, we must get over those issues. What I want to do is to make sure that this service is up and running fully as soon as possible. New staff will be recruited. A new group of graduate staff will be available in July and August. They will be recruited immediately. Hopefully, they will take up the posts. We are hopeful that we would have all the beds back open again at the start of September.

All four CAMHS units nationally - Éist Linn in Cork, Merlin Park in Galway and St. Vincent's, also in Dublin, with ten beds operational at present - hold a team meeting every week and they look at the list. They look at the amount of children who are triaged who are waiting and that already happened this week.

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