Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Seanad Public Consultation Committee report on children’s mental health, similar to the Citizens’ Assembly work that led to the recent referendum on the eighth amendment, is a body of work led by the citizens of Ireland who have lived experience of the issue. We see how well politics works when citizens are authentically engaged, heard and listened to. This must be the case for this report too.

The integrity and power with which the service user witnesses spoke is an inspiration to legislators and policy makers trying to improve mental health services. Parents, who had to fight so that their children could gain access to mental health treatment, continued the fight on behalf of other children and families by coming into the Seanad and sharing their stories with raw sincerity. We are indebted to each of them.

We also owe gratitude to the stakeholders who provided invaluable insights, knowledge and data for use in the report. It is powerful to take the stories of the service users and then apply them to the knowledge and insight from the NGOs who live this issue day in, day out. The committee itself deserves commendation for collating and analysing all of the submissions and making solid, tangible recommendations within this report. It is an excellent piece of cross-party work, and can serve as a roadmap to improving children’s mental health services.

We cannot take our eye of the ball, and while this report is solid and worthy of existence, we are only beginning the work that is clearly so necessary. Since this report was published in October, how many of the recommendations have been looked at by the Government?How many have been implemented? Has an implementation plan been formulated? The findings of the report are deeply disturbing. To quote the main finding of the report: "...there is a chronic lack of standardised services and a lack of clarity surrounding the operation of CAMHS in Ireland". This is not a finding that children's mental health services need improvement. This is a finding that children's mental health services are in complete disarray and are continuously failing our children.

We need to drill down into the detail of this issue now, and with urgency. Take, for example, community healthcare organisation, CHO, area 1, which covers counties Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan. A parliamentary question tabled by my colleague, Deputy Louise O'Reilly, last June found that staffing levels in CHO 1, which is my area, were at 53% of the recommended levels in A Vision for Change. A reply that I received only yesterday stated that by December, that percentage had dropped to 48.7%. How can we possibly believe that the Minister will take this report seriously when, in parallel to the report being drafted, the situation is getting worse in some areas, including mine?

The success of this report will hinge on accountability. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that this will be an easy task when it comes to the HSE. Extensive work has been done by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Future of Mental Healthcare to draw out figures and data on mental health spending, but to be honest it is harder than drawing blood from a stone.

My party asked for a simple breakdown of CAMHS spending in a parliamentary question two weeks ago. The reply today stated: "The existing national financial systems do not currently provide for reporting at specialty sub specialty level." Was this information not provided to the committee when it was deliberating on CAMHS? I accept that the HSE is changing the way it records its finances, but it is absolutely imperative that Members of the Oireachtas get the most up-to-date and accurate information available when requested through parliamentary questions and other mechanisms. If we do not, how are we to monitor and progress the recommendations of this report?

Will the Minister of State go back to the parliamentary question unit of the mental health division of the HSE and re-examine the information, or lack thereof, that is being provided to Members of these Houses? If the staff who provide this information need support and resources to improve the information they are providing, I urge the Minister of State to support them without delay For us to allow this report to remain a fleeting dream would be an absolute disservice to those who gave testimonies during its development. We are seeing now that storytelling is making real change in Irish society, and in the world of mental health this is a real opportunity for us to hear the stories and allow them to make the impact that they deserve. Those keepers of the harrowing stories within this report have already done their jobs. It is now up to us, and to the Minister of State, to take the gift they gave us, treat it with the respect it deserves, and take strategic action to commit to and plan to achieve the recommendations of the committee.