An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Dail Éireann — 2025-04-29
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Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

I thank the Deputy for her question. This year, €160 million has been allocated to the 81 child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, teams across the country. That includes five eating disorder teams for young people. An additional €3 million has been allocated for a waiting list initiative. Yesterday, I visited two CAMHS teams, one in Ashbourne, County Meath, and the other in Swords, County Dublin. I visited three teams in Cork in the past three weeks as well. I am taking an approach of going to meet teams to find out exactly where the challenges lie.
The Deputy is quite right in what she said. There are a lot of referrals to CAMHS but the number of acceptances from referrals varies across teams. It is always a consultant psychiatrist working a the multidisciplinary team who will determine whether a child meets the criteria or not. I also meet families who cannot understand why their children do not meet the criteria. We also have a lot of children presenting with a dual diagnosis whereby there is a mental health issue in addition to autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder----

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-04-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-04-29