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

It is timely that we are having this debate on child and youth mental health after the Minister of State voted to delay the Sinn Féin legislation to regulate CAMHS by nine months last night. The Minister of State's rationale to vote against this important legislation to improve services within children and adolescent mental health services is compromised. The Government spent its opening ten minutes trying to dismantle the legislation. The Minister of State, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, stated, "I cannot see how the Bill, as currently written, [is] meaningfully ..." If the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, believed that this Bill was not meaningful, why did she kick it down the road for nine months? Why did she not vote it down? It will be the same Bill in nine months. For parents who may be watching today, what happens after nine months is that this Bill will be read a second time without debate, which means that my party's Bill to regulate CAMHS that the Government said is not meaningful will progress to Committee Stage and pre-legislative scrutiny. The Minister of State is talking out of both sides of her mouth.

She mentioned restoring confidence in CAMHS. The first step to restore confidence in CAMHS would have been to regulate the services to make it safer for young people and parents who experience it. She also mentioned that the Children's Rights Alliance gave CAMHS an E grade for the placement of children in adult psychiatric facilities. I welcome the decrease in that regard, which has to be acknowledged, but that was not the only reason the services was given the E grade. It is the second or third year running CAMHS was given an E grade. The reason the services was given it was the overall failure in children's mental health services that was highlighted by the Maskey report and the Mental Health Commission's.

I agree with what the Minister of State said about the CAMHS worker who she met in Kerry who should not be shamed. She definitely should not be shamed. The shame belongs to successive Governments that have presided over abject failure in children and youth mental health.

I opened my speech last night by thanking the workers in CAMHS. Any of those I have met are dedicated. They see it as a vocation and they go in there to help children, but they are let down by systemic failures within the HSE.

The Minister of State also talked about hope. I do not have much time. I can talk about problems here all day but I will give the Minister of State some solutions. The biggest hope that people have out there is a change of government because it is difficult for the Government that has presided over all the problems in youth mental health to be the one that will be the catalyst for the change needed to improve children's mental health, and we need to see that change. In government, Sinn Féin would rebalance care towards early intervention and condition management by multidisciplinary primary care and community-based teams.

We produced a comprehensive document, "Child and Youth Mental Health". I gave the Minister of State a copy. I do not know if she read it. If the Minister of State has not, I suggest that she do that over the weekend because this will give her the solutions to help tackle the crisis that has been caused in youth mental health. It will help the Minister of State engage with workers and their representatives to resolve and recruitment and retention barriers, plan further and higher education places based on future service need to deliver new teams and ensure safe staffing levels, ensure that services can support patients with disabilities, and strengthen linkages with specialist secondary and acute care services, such as for substance misuse and eating disorders.

Sinn Féin would expand CAMHS to cover young adults up to the age of 25. It has been demonstrated that approximately 50% of mental health problems are established by the age of 14 and 75% by the age of 24. At present, young people who develop a mental illness fall through the cracks. If they are in the CAMH services, they are more likely to age out of the services and not get the care that they need in adult mental health services.

I am happy to give the Minister of State a copy of these solutions. I will give up my time here because I want to let my comrades in. I am happy to leave a copy of these solutions with the Minister of State because children cannot wait any longer and our children deserve better. She should take the weekend to read it

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