Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, to the House. I am delighted he is taking the matter. We have had issues every now and then with people not being in a position to give responses to supplementary contributions. I hope the Minister of State will respond to me today.

I have put in a question about the closure of day programme at Linn Dara at 4 p.m. last Friday. My Dáil colleagues, Deputies Aengus Ó Snodaigh and Pat Buckley, raised the matter as a Topical Issue last night and I hope the Minister of State is not going to read out what was read out to them. We need to move on and work to get this vital service restored for our young children and adolescents. The Minister of State knows about Linn Dara. Last year, half of the beds in the inpatient unit were closed down and on Friday that happened to the day programme servicing the inpatient unit and outpatients to keep people at home to be treated in the community as per A Vision for Change. In 2006, it was announced that there would be 15 of these units opened across the country. We had three and are now down to two. We cannot stand over that. We cannot stand over the chipping away, brick-by-brick, at child and adolescent mental health services. The Minister of State has been frequently involved with the Committee on the Future of Mental Health Care and he knows about the absolute crisis in services for children. Many services are not being provided.

The Minister of State should not listen to the management of the HSE, he should listen to me and those people who are on the ground regarding their experience of how this service was shut down. On 11 June, the consultant was told by the director of services of concerns regarding staffing in CAMHS at the Linn Dara day programme. The possibility arose because the supporting CAMHS in Clondalkin was in dire straits. The consultant was willing to support the services in Clondalkin and formulated a solution with staff to provide 50% of capacity to Clondalkin with 50% remaining in the afternoon. It was half and half. Staff would go to Clondalkin in the morning and return to Linn Dara to carry out the assessments, appointments and therapies in the diary to provide long-awaited services to adolescents and children. As such, two members of staff went to Clondalkin and nothing else happened between 11 June and 27 June. On 27 June, an email was circulated by senior management instructing and advising of the closure of the day hospital programme on 6 July, which was last Friday. The senior manager went on to say the service should not inform any of the families directly about the closure and should continue to make appointments at 3.55 p.m. on Friday for children who have been on those waiting lists for a long time. This order not to inform families was the entire concern of management. They refused to communicate directly with the families or the staff. They said they would not issue letters to cancel appointments because they did not want them to end up on the Joe Duffy show.The closure was kept quiet. Last Monday the team members were instructed to commence working in their new posts, but, again, they were not consulted. The closure has caused massive distress and led to significant consequences for the adults involved and their families. All of the adults were discharged prematurely from the day programme last Friday, 6 July. In the space of just one week the families were informed of the closure and that their loved ones would be discharged from the programme. The unit has ceased operations. We have been told that it will be reopened in September or October, but that is absolute balderdash, as I know that staff have been told that the issue will be reviewed in November. That does not mean, however, that the unit will be reopened. Consultants have been offered the opportunity to return, but the same courtesy has not been shown to any of the team.

I urge the Minister of State to show leadership. I want him to tell the HSE that enough is enough, that the people affected have had enough, that everything has changed and that it is the people of the nation and their children who are in dire straits. I plead with him to show leadership and provide assistance for the people concerned.