Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the Seanad to discuss the very important issue of mental health and particularly the mental health of our young people. I could not even read the Maskey report. I regularly deal with the parents of children who are fighting for mental health support. It is scandalous that in 2022 the State has once again let down 46 children that we know of and there could be more.

There is not a town, village or parish that has not been touched by problems with mental health. Very often it is left to local leaders and individuals to scramble to try to heal what is going on in the area and we do not have the answer. Social workers do not have the answer. Very often people are nearly left counselling the social workers themselves to try to give them strength to carry on. Those social workers and people working in mental health services need to be looked after, otherwise they will leave and we will need to replace them.

The mental health area needs urgent attention. No one in Ireland is untouched by it through themselves, a family member or a friend. The impact on communities as a whole is keenly felt. The estimated prevalence of mental health disorders is relatively high in Ireland compared with other European countries and yet spending on mental health is relatively low, according to OECD figures for 2018. In 2021, Ireland's mental health budget was €1 billion or 5% of our overall health budget compared with 12% in New Zealand and the UK. The Mental Health Commission reported in 2019 how change in our mental health service provision is unco-ordinated, ad hocand slow. Issues highlighted included the need for best practice to be applied consistently across the country; for specialist inpatient approved centres to be up to the standard; and the need to continue moving the treatment and recovery model to specialised professional community care.

The professional body of psychiatrists has identified a deficit of approximately 100 permanent consultants in mental health services. According to the HSE's medical workforce planning for the specialty of psychiatry report published in March 2021, 526 consultants are delivering psychiatric care in the public mental health system with an additional 55 consultants working exclusively in private mental health care. It is projected that an estimated 276 consultants will leave the publicly funded workforce over the next ten years due to retirement. The review found that 825 consultants would be required by 2030 to meet demand. Where will the psychiatrists come from? If they are here in Ireland, what do we need to do to get them into the job? If they are not in Ireland and we need to recruit them from abroad, how do we get them into the country and working? We need answers to these questions.

I have been advocating for this for ten or 15 years, including two years as a Senator. We need a dedicated counsellor in every primary and secondary school. Our children are our future and they need us. None of us in this Chamber knows what it is like to grow up as a child in Ireland today. Our children do and they need someone to talk to about that who will help and guide them. A one- or two-year waiting list does not cut it. Teachers are the first people who will be able to tell us something is wrong with a child. Having a counsellor in-house in the school for a child to relate those fears to is very important. It may take 18 months to get an appointment with CAMHS. Having school counsellors is really important.

We need community crisis groups, trained teams that can move to a town or community that has experienced a suicide or is having a mental health epidemic, and offer concentrated and dedicated support to anyone who needs it. In my town, we had five in the space of one year. In my own parish there were four in one year. Those people are grappling to try to find solutions. We need some sort of NGO that is funded to get into those towns, do a health check there and give the town or parish the support it needs.

We need to do more on online safety for our children. They need to be taught in an age-appropriate manner about the dangers of the Internet, social media, how to engage in good online behaviour and things to avoid doing online. We need to build resilience in our young people. We need to give them scope and have them understand their place in the world and its history and how strong they really are. We need to empower them to take control in their lives. We need to let them know that school and social media are not the world and that there is so much richness and full life out there just waiting for them to experience. We just need to give them hope.

Having confidence and resilience classes available to our youth in our communities is really important. Money should be provided to youth clubs for confidence and resilience building.

Children in care are probably the most precious because they are the ones who have not experienced love from day one. The care system has been very good. When it comes to getting a child into CAMHS they do not have to wait very long to get into the services. Sometimes the auxiliary forces for the counselling that they need are not available on tap. They are very often given pills to medicate the issue, putting a plaster on it temporarily to get over that bump. That is never the long-term solution. As any parent knows, giving a pill to a child does not fix the problem. It is all about talking and counselling.

If they are not in education or after-care when they turn 18, everything stops. Their access to mental health support is completely gone. That age threshold needs to be increased to 26 or 27. Those young people will continue to have mental health problems throughout their entire lives if they are not given the supports after the age of 18.