Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy will be aware, eating disorders are complex, individualised and are and can be one of the most serious mental health illnesses anybody can go through. As Minister of State, I am firmly committed to improving services for eating disorders in Ireland. The national clinical programme was set up in 2018, and when it was set up it was envisaged there would be approximately 60 people who would require the supports of clinical eating disorder teams. The figure now stands at approximately 600 in the space of seven years. The programme has progressed very well. Some 90% of all people with an eating disorder are treated in the community. Quite rightly, therefore, a decision was made to focus the supports as much as possible in the community. We now have 14 of the 16 teams envisaged by the model of care funded. Eleven of them are in place and one of them actually moved into a new premises last Friday, while three of them are currently in the process of recruitment. Most teams, as I said, are fully operational and seeing people with eating disorders every day. It is also extremely important to point out that there are 100 dedicated clinicians working across all the eating disorder teams in the country, with ten psychiatric consultants. The progress being made is not being acknowledged at all. There was recurring funding of €9 million this year alone for eating disorder teams under this clinical programme. We have two more teams to fund and I hope to do that in next year's budget, with the support of the Minister. Under-18s can access 20 eating disorder beds across the four CAMHS inpatient units. This is very clear. I say this because this has been lost in translation as well. There are 20 dedicated eating disorder beds across four CAMHS inpatient units. Coupled with this, the majority of people presenting with eating disorders are, unfortunately, aged 14, 15, 16 and 17. I will respond during my next contribution concerning the adult beds.

See this speech in context