Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, for coming in. She will know that the report of the task force on youth mental health was published in 2017. Subsequently there was a commitment by the Government to set up a pathfinder unit for youth mental health. One of the asks of the youth mental health pathfinder project was to effectively embed a new model of cross-government working using section 12 of the Public Service Management Act of 1997. This pathfinder project is crucial to opening up a more collective approach to youth mental health, facilitating the working together of several key Departments, namely the Department of Health, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, the Department of Education and the Department of An Taoiseach. Organisations such as the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Mental Health Reform, BeLonG To Youth Services, and Spunout.ie, as well as Professor Mary Cannon of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dr. Tony Bates, and other individuals and politicians have continuously highlighted how children and young people have been seriously impacted by delays in access and lack of resources in mental health services in Ireland. Six years later, there has been no action by the Minister of State's Department to deliver on this commitment.

Responses to several parliamentary questions from various Deputies including my good comrade, Deputy Mark Ward, have received almost identical responses each time. This response states that the proposal is to formalise a new model for collaborative working within government and place a pathfinder unit on a statutory footing through section 12 of the Public Service Management Act 1997. The response goes on to state that as this section has not been used before, various administrative, budgetary, governance and legal arrangements need to be developed and agreed with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to ensure a robust and workable model for the unit. It goes on further to state that the demands on both Departments during the pandemic have presented challenges in progressing the proposals and that nonetheless, the Department of Health has engaged with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to develop an implementation option that fully addresses these issues. That is a very long way of saying that this is complicated and the Department is too busy. Is that really what the Minister of State's Department and the Government are telling our children and young people at home who are waiting years for appointments for their mental health?

The mental health services are beyond a crisis. We have seen a damning report in January and the spotlight report released at the beginning of May. We know the situation is dire. We have reached record numbers waiting for first-time appointments with child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, with 4,434 waiting overall, of whom 682 are waiting over a year. This is a rise of 110% and 215% respectively since the Government first took office. There are more than 11,000 children waiting for an appointment with primary care psychology. Some 22% of children in community healthcare area CHO 3, which covers Limerick, are waiting longer than a year for their first appointment. Jigsaw in Limerick has waiting times of around 18 weeks, nearly five months for a young person in crisis to be able to get some support. CAMHS must be extended to help young people up to the age of 25, by which age 75% of chronic mental ill-health has been established. Provision should also be made for child counselling in primary care. I want to stress the importance of setting up the pathfinder unit as a matter of urgency at a time when youth mental health services in this country are wholly inadequate and in a state beyond crisis point. That the Government has not progressed the long-awaited pathfinder unit after six years is another piece of damning evidence that it does not treat mental health and the well-being of our children and young people with the urgency it deserves.