Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. Ireland is a very good country in which to raise a child. Out of 200 countries in the world, we are in the top ten or 20 in almost everything. We have very good maternal and neonatal health services. We have among the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. We have a very good education system with among the best education outcomes in the world. We have introduced early years education and by September the cost of childcare will be half what it was when this Government came to office. We have the free schoolbooks scheme and hot school meals schemes. We get an A grade from the Children's Rights Alliance, to which the Deputy referred, when it comes to online safety and media regulation, particularly in light of the appointment of the Online Safety Commissioner. Of the 16 matters on which the Children's Rights Alliance grades us, we are up in four, the same in 12 and down in none. We fail only in only one of the 16. I absolutely believe that this is not good enough, because my ambition is something more. It is for this to be the best country in the world to be a child, bar none. That is one of the things which drives my work and that of the Government.

On the recruitment freeze, I know the Deputy wants to know the facts - that is not always the case with people in this House but she is one of the ones who does - since the Government came to office, 26,000 more people are working in our public health service than was the case before. That includes 1,000 more consultants, 2,000 more doctors and 6,000 more nurses and midwives. By extra I mean extra, not replacements. When the recruitment freeze was in place last year, the total number of staff in the HSE increased by more in a year than has been the case for many years. Some 8,000 extra staff were hired by the HSE last year. This year, during the so-called recruitment freeze, the HSE has the authority to hire an extra 3,000 staff. Those are the facts.

What we cannot allow the HSE to do, which is what happened in the past, is that money allocated for one purpose is spent on another. It may be a worthy purpose, but that is not the point. I refer, for example, to funding being allocated to hire 50 staff in a certain area and then 50 staff being hired somewhere else for some other purpose else. While all of the latter might be doing really important work, that type of thing is just not good enough.

The new CEO of the HSE agrees with me and is making those changes.

On children being admitted to adult psychiatric units, we stand over our promise, I restate it and we are making progress in that regard. In 2019, the year before this Government came to office, 54 children were placed in adult wards. Last year that was down to 12, so we are going in the right direction in that regard. All decisions to put a child in an adult ward are made by a consultant psychiatrist with the interest of protecting the young person and their well-being. The majority were over 17 years, all were voluntarily detained for a short period of time and in some cases the young people even turned 18 and transferred to adult care during their admission. No consultant takes the decision lightly and it is often done in consultation with parents. I have been there, Deputy, and sometimes it makes sense for a 17-year-old or even a 16-year-old to be in a private room on an adult ward rather than in a children's unit 200 miles away.

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