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

If the Government is not happy with the Bill, why not just vote it down? It will be the same Bill nine months from now. What the Minister of State is doing is contradicting herself. That does not surprise me. The entire Opposition is in favour of progressing the Bill rather than it being kicked down the road to be dealt with in nine months' time. We need to stop this nonsense.

I acknowledge the families who are here again tonight and who have stayed for the two hours of this debate.

They are pulling their hair out with frustration. It just shows how much this really means to them and their families and most of all what it means to their children. Their children simply deserve better than what has been going on in the Houses of Parliament tonight. I do not think there is a bigger crime in this world than denying a child every opportunity to reach their full potential but that is exactly what the Government is doing tonight by delaying this Bill.

I want to address some of the Minister of State's responses to the Bill. She mentioned the reduction in waiting times and any reduction in waiting times is welcome. However, I want to bring to her attention the latest figures I have. When the Government was formed in 2020, we had 2,115 children waiting for a first assessment with CAMHS. This now stands at 3,891, an increase of 1,800 on Minister of State's watch. A total of 656 of these children have been waiting for over a year. How can she stand over this? Based on her response about the budget, if we did not know better, we might think everything is rosy in the garden but it is quite the contrary. The overall percentage for the mental health budget has fallen under this Government. The Minister of State mentioned an increase of 68 CAMHS workers since this time last year. While any increase is welcome, will this increase open the 20 CAMHS beds closed under this Government's watch? Will this increase fully staff CAMHS-ID teams? Will this increase stop children falling through the cracks when they reach the age of 18?

The Minister of State also mentioned the new roles for youth mental health, but that is not what she asked for originally. She asked for - I supported her call - a national clinical director for mental health but she failed to deliver on this. She mentioned that there has been an increase in referrals to CAMHS but she failed to mention the reasons. If our young people are getting early intervention at the earliest possible time, they are less likely to need the more acute services of CAMHS as they get older. I am referring to the 16,000 young people currently waiting for primary care psychology. In some areas Jigsaw is doing really well but a post code lottery exists in other areas where children are not getting the Jigsaw appointment they need.

In bringing forward this legislation, I spoke to parents outside. I do not want to raise people's hopes just to have them dashed. That is not what I am here for. My job is to bring forward good proper legislation as an Opposition Deputy. The Minister of State might have an army of staff there; I just have Joseph O'Callaghan working with me and I want to thank him. Two of us in my office have been working on this with stakeholders and families. We bring it forward here in good faith. The Minister of State had an opportunity tonight not to kick this down the road and let it go through prelegislative scrutiny but she has denied children and their parents that opportunity. I have said it before and I say it again: our children deserve better. We never pretended this legislation was the panacea to fix everything that is wrong in mental health but, my God, it was a step in the right direction.

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