Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)

I hope he will do so as a new Minister of State in this area. The word on the ground from people working in child psychiatry making referrals to social services is that the teams are under severe pressure. This is not just anecdotal. People on maternity leave are not replaced. Some of this boils down to what the HSE means by "serious and immediate risk". Will the Minister of State tell us what this means? The word is that social workers are not allocated to many serious cases or children are not assessed quickly enough and are being ignored. This is of concern to me.

The Minister of State's speech contains a contradiction where he states, "I was informed also that a detailed consultation and reporting process is already under way to determine the current state of the waiting list issue." If the HSE does not know the cases on the waiting list or does not have a breakdown of the type of cases waiting to be seen, how can the Minister of State categorically state in a previous paragraph that the HSE has re-assured him, "...that in all cases where there is a serious and immediate risk to the health or welfare of a child, the HSE responds immediately"? Will the Minister of State examine this because I do not believe it is convincing.

This may not be a resource issue. It may be a question of where the resources are going, recruitment or the size of the teams responding to the increased needs. Will the Minister of State take on board the point about denial because it is a key issue? People have a tendency to state it is not true when children need services. It is in our history and it seems to be a repeating pattern.

The programme gave many statistics, which belie what the Minister of State stated. A total of 374 social work cases in the north Dublin area have not been properly assessed. In central Dublin, the waiting list for a child to be given a social worker is up to one year. In Kerry, a child may expect to endure a waiting list of three and a half years for a psychiatric report. As we speak, the Cavan-Monaghan child psychiatry service is closed as is the Kildare service, which is not even taking referrals for a waiting list.

What is a parent of a psychotic 13 year old to do if there is no local child and family service or mental health service available? Have guidelines been provided to GPs in those counties who will see children who require immediate service? Will the Minister of State take an interest in this aspect of emergency services? They are not available at present.

Will the Minister of State tell the House how many children classified as at risk are on waiting lists and receive no psychiatric or social care intervention? How many are at risk who have not yet been classified? The previous Minister of State, who has been promoted to the position of Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was unable to answer these questions in the Dáil.

I am concerned that the social workers who co-operated with the "Prime Time Investigates" report had to do so anonymously. I was a social worker before entering politics. Why do well-trained social workers feel they cannot speak out either through their union——