Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We were all listening to the radio this morning and heard about the delay in smear tests. On average, it takes up to 18 weeks or longer. After what happened in the past few months in particular, no woman should have to wait 18 weeks or upwards for the results of a smear test so I will be asking the Minister for Health to address this.

Today, I would like to finish the point about mental health that I was prevented from making yesterday. One area identified in the final report of the Joint Committee on the Future of Mental Health Care as containing serious barriers is the area of young adult and teen mental health. There are just not enough services for that age group and we lose real people inside the statistics. That is why I wanted to talk about three young people who are showing us all the benefits of sport for mental health. The sport of kickboxing is thriving around the world. In the World Association of Kickboxing Organizations, WAKO, World Kickboxing Championships in Italy, competitors from Kickboxing Ireland won 12 gold medals, 11 silver and 29 bronze on the global stage. Three of those gold medallists were from Larry's Kickboxing club in Carlow - Billie Maher, a 14 year old girl; Jack Dawson, a 14 year old boy; and Jamie Walker, a 12 year old boy. I wanted to raise their triumph and the achievements of our other young athletes in sport in the past few months because we should shout loud about the great work our young people are doing. In an age when we worry about resilience in our children, the benefits of sports such as kickboxing cannot be overlooked.

The committee's report, which was launched yesterday, laid out several suggestions for better mental health care, including a move to 24-7 services, which are sorely needed. Through our work on the committee, we saw how accident and emergency departments across the country are the only available places for people with mental health issues to go, which is wholly unsuitable. We cannot look after each other if we do not have specialised staff and facilities equipped with the right tools to help.

A total of 22 recommendations were made in the report. I will not mention all of them as I would like to be brief. However, we constantly see funding being the main barrier to helping people. We need to change that and to push mental health, especially in younger adults teens and children, up in the political agenda. We identified smart phones and other such devices as areas where schools need to work on with parents and children but we need to look at how our young people are living in Ireland today and how we are not listening sufficiently to what is going on.

Yesterday, the ESRI released the Growing Up in Ireland report. The report dealt with the lives of 13 year olds and how they are doing. While the issues of overweight and obesity levels are cited, I want to draw attention to the statistics showing that about 10% of 13 year olds reported that they had been bullied in the three months before they were interviewed for the report and that 2% said they had bullied someone else. Boys and girls were about equally likely to have been bullied. Having been bullied was associated with a higher risk of socio-emotional and behavioural problems. Yesterday, the National Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Centre in DCU stated that 22% of children aged 12 to 15 have been bullied. If there is anything that can empower our children, we should be supportive of it so that their futures are not decided outside of their control.

In schools across the country, despite new policies and initiatives, cyberbullying and real-life bullying still take place. We are not doing enough. We have the information to stop bullying now so why would we not do so? From a series of questions entitled The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire that were answered by their parents, we can see that the socio-emotional and behavioural well-being of 13 year olds is generally good and very similar to levels from UK studies. Based on the answers to this set of questions, 13 year olds with certain characteristics and from some family backgrounds were more likely than others to be classified as being at risk of socio-emotional and behavioural problems. I will finish on this point.