Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

Some teams accept more referrals while others accept less. All I can say on the floor of the Dáil is my commitment to trying to provide additional funding.

We have 81 teams. We have relocated many CAMHS teams into good primary care centres, which have good locations, yet we are still seeing the waiting lists grow. We have 1.2 million young people in the country, whereas five years ago, we had 900,000. This is a 25% increase. We are seeing more presentations since Covid. We are seeing an exponential growth in the number of young people presenting with eating disorders and self-harm issues. I know I am digressing now but I put much of it down to social media and what young people have access to on their phones.

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