Eamon Scanlon (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail)
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195. To ask the Minister for Health if parents can avail of psychiatric services for their children through the National Treatment Purchase Fund with a view to reducing waiting times for child and adolescent mental health services; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22239/17]

Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Health and the HSE are working hard, on a continuous basis, to improve the delivery of mental health services for children and the services have benefitted from the significant additional investment in mental health in recent years. Additional funding in Budget 2017 has resulted in an overall provision of €853m for all HSE mental health services in 2017.

There are currently 67 Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service teams, and 3 Paediatric Liaison Teams, supported by 66 operational CAMHS beds nationally. Further CAMHS beds are planned to come on-stream in the near future. Approximately 18,500 children will attend the CAMHS service this year.

There are difficulties in recruiting and retaining specialist CAMHS staff, particularly Consultant Psychiatrists. Intensive recruitment efforts are on-going but there is currently a serious shortage of suitably qualified CAMHS Consultants both at national and European level. It should be noted however that despite increasing CAMHS demands overall and the staffing difficulties, 68% of children referred to CAMHS are seen within twelve weeks. Over the past two years, the waiting list for over 12 months reduced by 50% (from 455 cases to 255).

It is important to remember that despite increasing demands overall on CAMHS, individual cases professionally assessed as requiring urgent access to services do receive priority.

The HSE Service Plan 2017, as a priority, will further develop CAMHS, including better out-of- hours liaison and seven-day response services.

It is not envisaged that the Waiting List initiatives due to be implemented by the NTPF and the HSE under its Waiting List Action Plans, will include mental health services.