Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to join in the words of sympathy to the families and colleagues of Flor O'Mahony and Damien O'Reilly.

In deference to the recommendation that we raise one issue, I will attempt to do that and stick to one. It is an issue that I intend to raise repeatedly until we arrive at some level of satisfaction on it. This very serious issue is question of where are we at with the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, CAMHS. In other words, what levels of waiting lists are there? What are we going to do about resolving them? If we do not intervene in time with young people in distress, or with whatever myriad of difficulties, then the problem is exacerbated and gets worse. I need to get clarity on this whether by bringing in a Minister or providing me with the detail as a starting point. We certainly need a starting point here. This is a very subtle way of bringing in another issue, but I am going to keep talking about this with the same repetitiveness as I did about gambling until there was movement there. I will be doing that throughout this term. I think we have a moral responsibility to not ignore issues of this gravity and I look forward to a response.