Jillian van Turnhout (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 13, to delete lines 2 and 3.

I raised this issue on Committee Stage. The amendment proposes to delete the provision in subsection 8(4)(a) whereby "psychological services associated with the provision of specialist mental health services to children" are excluded from the range of services provided by the new child and family agency. I accept the need to outline what the agency will do, but I have a major difficulty with a provision which serves to rule out the inclusion of these particular services. I listened carefully to what the Minister said on this point on Tuesday, but I still do not understand why they must be explicitly excluded. I accept that special mental health services are not, at this stage, included within the remit of the agency, but there is no such explicit exclusion in the case, for example, of public health nurses, who are not transferring over.

The child death reports published by the Health Service Executive indicate that in 75% of cases, there was evidence of a need to engage with the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. In her response to Senator Leyden's amendment No. 1, the Minister argued that a reference to "educational welfare" could not be included in the Bill because other bodies such as the National Educational Psychological Service have a role in carrying out those functions. There is a contradiction, in light of that argument, in specifically excluding specialist mental health services from the Bill. It is an exclusion that imposes a straitjacket in terms of our ability to develop essential links in the provision of services for children. Subsection 8(3) outlines what the agency will include, but why is there a need specifically to exclude these particular services? It seems to me the Minister is double-bolting the door and preventing them from ever being included within the remit of the agency. As I said, the child death reports show that at least 75% of cases involved mental health issues which would require access to CAMHS. I have a huge difficulty with a provision that explicitly excludes those services from the remit of the new agency.