Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Before I come to the issue in question, which is the report on the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, if we are having a debate about hyperemesis gravidarum, I could take part in that as well, having suffered it myself and having been hospitalised with it.

To get back to this issue, we are a small State that pays its department heads and health managers handsomely, so the very idea that CAMHS is in the state it is in is a damning indictment of that management and the Ministers. The very idea that in one CHO alone we have 140 children described as “lost” within the system is staggering and should have all the alarm bells ringing. Has it not dawned on all this management in the HSE that medicine in any area, especially mental health, is not a numbers and management game but a game that involves having the right people with the right expertise?

My blood ran cold when I heard a young doctor talk last year about simply being a person who was rostered in to fill a job in mental health when his training and experience was minimal. It ran even colder when the person said they were left doing that job in mental health without adequate support or supervision. I felt sorry for this doctor. I cannot imagine the stress of being in that position, feeling that you are just a number looking after other numbers. Is it any wonder that the invisible wounds in our children are being missed when they are being treated by doctors who are not qualified in the sense of experience, practice and area interest? I doubt very much that the same well-paid management would put a junior respiratory doctor in charge of amputating a leg or removing a gallbladder, but when it comes to the mental health of our children and young people, it seems that anything goes. That is why my heart goes out to the trained teams who have the expertise and the practice, and who are having to work way beyond their hours and limits, but do so anyway because they are committed to the care of our young people. We are very lucky to have them.

The Minister must do as the inspectorate recommends and review all cases currently open within CAMHS, focusing especially on children lost to follow-up and looking at children on antipsychotic medications. We have to put the regulation of CAMHS under the Mental Health Act 2001. The Minister started his speech by saying the current figures are unacceptable. When we say something is unacceptable, that should mean we do not accept it. Please do not tell us about lessons being learned because our fragile children are living them, and they are the ones who have to accept these failures.

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