Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to begin by acknowledging this catastrophic report, which has been released. I commend the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, on insisting that this happened, that the research was done and that we got a real drill-down to the detail of where the system is at. We have all known for years that there are difficulties and problems but there are some really stark and frightening outcomes in that report.

As the Minister of State will be aware, I have on many occasions raised with her the issue of mental health, both with adolescents and children and with adults.

I hate to admit it, but I firmly believe that in CHO1 and especially in Cavan-Monaghan, we have one of the highest rates of suicide. I take this opportunity to plead with the Minister yet again to deliver Jigsaw in Cavan-Monaghan. He has made huge inroads in delivering a service in CAMHS in Cavan-Monaghan, but the reason I ask for Jigsaw specifically is that visibility and recognition are hugely important. We talk about teleservices or tele-therapies for young people. I still strongly believe in face-to-face contact. We know services are available at the end of the phone. However, we also know that when people are at their darkest moment, it is simply too late.

I have never seen anything like this Christmas and New Year in Cavan-Monaghan. There was a huge loss of life, especially of young people, because of suicide. As the Minister will be aware, I have campaigned for a long time for Suicide Crisis Awareness, SCA, nurses and I am grateful to him for the delivery of SCA nurses. I strongly believe in them. They are very effective. We have seen that they have worked and they are a huge component part of mental health services. I wish the two nurses who took up those roles in CHO1 the very best in their important and significant roles. They can have a profound impact on the lives of people who find themselves in a dark place.

Everyone around the House has been able to share experiences from their constituency offices. I take this opportunity - it is great to have it - to speak frankly and openly with the Minister. One experience I can share with the Minister is of a 15 year old girl who was desperately crying out for help. She had the presence of mind to tell her parents, her social workers and the staff in her school that she needed help, but she had to fight the system to get it. When I say fight, I mean that her parents should not need to ring a Deputy to ask for help and to explain that their child needs intervention, specialised care and a bed. When I rang her school, with the agreement of her parents and the community around her, to find out how much on the radar of the school she was, I was told that in a school of 500 children she was in the top five of the children at risk. The school was able to recognise that and yet to get the professional help she wanted and knew she needed, she had to fight for it. That should not be the case. She should not need to come to me. I was more than happy to help her and when I made the necessary calls, she got help, but she was at the end - when her family rang me they said they had never phoned a Deputy before. They were sure it would not be something I could help with. Thankfully, I was able to help, but she should not need me to help. In Cavan-Monaghan we do not have the residential care and services required for children and adolescents. When children and adolescents find themselves in that position, they end up in clinical care alongside adults and that is simply not right. That girl got a bed in Linn Dara. I am grateful for that bed and the staff there were able to provide the care she needed. I am so glad to tell the Minister that because of the specialist care, that young girl is around today to tell that story. However, she and her parents would be the first to admit that had she not received that care and intervention, that might not be the case. That is one example. We all have endless numbers of examples of types of crisis and cases we have heard about. I join with all the voices, including that of the Minister, to concur that what is needed is oversight and accountability.

We have heard many times tonight that recruitment is an issue. We know that it is an issue in the HSE. Does CORU not have a part to play in this? I am aware of professionals who wanted to work with the HSE and have had to wait nine to 12 months to make the cut, to get through the paperwork and the nonsense that goes on with bureaucracy in order to get on the panel, to be part of the system and to take up the positions they are more than qualified for. CORU must be part of the solution.

I will finish with the case of Dan Hogan. He is not a young person I knew. I know his brother Rory Hogan. His mother spoke openly and honestly on Drivetime this week. I was driving to the constituency when I heard her interview with Cormac Ó hEadhra. Elaine Clear gave the most harrowing account of what happened to her son. He went into mental health services at the age of 13 and he died at 17. This happened eight years ago. What upsets her most when she hears what we are talking about, hears these debates and reads that report, she is crippled by the thought that nothing has changed. You would have to stop the car, stop in your tracks when you hear about the experience she had from when he was 13 until he lost his life at 17, what they went through to try to get him the help and services he needed. This was her experience. When they got him into clinical care, he was brought to the clinician who was looking after him who gave his father the option of either signing the boy into a service she described as a prison, where the doors were locked - he went through five locked doors to get to the room he was going to be cared for in - or the service would get a court order to sign him in. His mother did not want him to have a record in his adult life so she agreed to sign him in. There were no phones. No parent was allowed to stay with him. It is bizarre that would be the case. When would a parent ever be asked to leave a child? They were asked to leave a child who was in that kind of deep, dark, hollow, black place that we cannot imagine, told they could not stay with their child, could not sit with him. She would have given anything to stay the night with him. She, her husband and her brother would have rotated. They wanted to be with him. They were not allowed. They were locked out of his care. She told me that her son eventually got a phone somehow. He was not allowed phone contact or anything like that but he got a phone and he was whispering on the phone as though he was in prison. He was asking his Mam to take him out, to collect him, to get him out of there. She has to live with that now.

It must of course be acknowledged there are great people there who are under huge pressure. Mental health services and especially CAMHS is in very good hands. I know that the Minister of State leads this with her heart as much as her head. I would like to support her in any way I can to do the work she is doing.

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