Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Ward on the motion. What we are dealing with this evening is years of underinvestment. This is the reality. We can see it across the entire State. CHO 1 in my area has not yet received a lookback into all these issues but I am quite confident that it will be the same as everywhere else because the experience of young people and their families has been the same. They have been let down, there are long waiting lists and those who are in the service find it to be ad hoc. They meet a clinical psychologist, that person is gone, a new person comes in and they must start from the beginning again. This chopping and changing is the routine they have had to deal with and it has not led to good outcomes. In fact, it has led to very poor and sometimes tragic outcomes for many families. A couple of months ago, I was contacted by a father who told me that his daughter had been brought to CAMHS, diagnosed and put on medication.

He looked for an appointment for her to go back for a review of the medication which she was supposed to get after three months. She could not get an appointment. The only answer she could get from CAMHS was to go to her general practitioner, GP. She went to the GP, who said the medication would be continued but only for three more months because they were not qualified to do this. CAMHS did not have the resources to bring the child back to review her medication. That is a problem across the entire country. It is why we have many young people who have been on anti-psychotic drugs for years and have damaged their health, sometimes irreversibly. The State has to own up to having a problem with this service. The problem is that it has been under-resourced.

This is not just a matter of not having resources or not being able to find the particular qualified people to do the job. The problem is much bigger than that. It has not been recognised as something that is urgent and crucial. We all know the adage, a stitch in time saves nine, about early intervention and so on, yet in these cases, children and their families were left in distress for years before they were dealt with. The outcome of that has been continuous poor health outcomes, not just for the young person who has been visiting CAMHS, but for their families, siblings and others around them. It is an absolute mess. We need to get a grip on this. We need to implement what is in this motion and give urgent attention to this issue. It is no good talking about it any more. We need action.

See this speech in context