Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for her question. This year, €160 million has been allocated to the 81 child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, teams across the country. That includes five eating disorder teams for young people. An additional €3 million has been allocated for a waiting list initiative. Yesterday, I visited two CAMHS teams, one in Ashbourne, County Meath, and the other in Swords, County Dublin. I visited three teams in Cork in the past three weeks as well. I am taking an approach of going to meet teams to find out exactly where the challenges lie.

The Deputy is quite right in what she said. There are a lot of referrals to CAMHS but the number of acceptances from referrals varies across teams. It is always a consultant psychiatrist working a the multidisciplinary team who will determine whether a child meets the criteria or not. I also meet families who cannot understand why their children do not meet the criteria. We also have a lot of children presenting with a dual diagnosis whereby there is a mental health issue in addition to autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder----

See this speech in context