Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is not done that way any more. I am talking about a head of mental health services, not lower grades. I know what the Senator's concerns are and I hope to address them in my summing up.

I agree with Senator van Turnhout. In the past number of weeks, I have looked for verification of the waiting list and I know that sometimes strikes terror among people on the list, as if we are asking if they really needed to be on it. I am accepting fully that the 3,000 children on the list need to be on it but I wonder what they need and if they should be waiting for the intensive CAMHS assessment. There is a different service, as Senator Moran has said, that can provide what those people need at a much earlier stage and that intervention needs to take place. My argument to the unit is that if someone is 12 months on that waiting list, he or she cannot be acutely unwell because if someone is acutely unwell, he or she should not be 12 months on the waiting list. It is about applying logic to all of that. Maybe the service for which those children are waiting 12 months could be delivered in a different way by a different organisation.

I fully accept what Senator van Turnhout says about Jigsaw and that is why we are increasing its provision. We are constantly looking at that list. There will always be the 5% which needs the kind of intensive care that only CAMHS, as a specialist service, can give. Surely, we should be able to treat children at an earlier stage and more appropriately. I still do not understand why we are referring children to CAMHS to see whether they need a classroom assistant. I am in talks with the Department of Education and Skills about all of that.

I still have not received clarification on the issue of why we cannot employ counselling psychologists, which was Senator Coghlan's issue. That is another part of the verification and I must ask why we are not doing that. There are people on that list who could very well be treated by counselling psychologists. We have the money - we have not returned any of the money in respect of recruitment - but we have huge difficulties recruiting clinical psychologists and psychiatrists for children. Senator Gilroy has asked what is so unattractive about the area and I do not know. Maybe it is the whole corporate thing in that we have damaged the health delivery system so much that people do not want to work for us. I am not certain.