Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At yesterday's meeting of the health committee, the new CEO of the HSE, Mr. Bernard Gloster, said to me in response to a question that we have serious questions to ask about whether we should continue to maintain more than 70 partially staffed child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, teams or whether we should reduce the number to 55 or 50 full teams. I submitted a couple of questions to the Minister a couple of weeks ago, when I first got an inkling of this, but I have not received a response. Therefore, I have a few more questions. Has the Government plans to reduce the number of CAMHS teams? Can the Government guarantee that this will lead to better health outcomes for young people? Will it reduce waiting lists? At present, we have a record high of 4,490 young people waiting for a first appointment. Will what is proposed reduce waiting times? Seven hundred and fifty-two young people have been waiting for more than a year for an appointment. Parents and young people are rightly concerned about this. Are there concrete plans to reduce the number of CAMHS teams or is this just another desperate attempt at kite flying by the HSE and Government?

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