-----but to reassure the Deputy, a new community nursing unit with 60 beds is being developed for Cashel, County Tipperary.

The Minister and I are committed to the development of a new community nursing unit for older persons in Cashel. As the Deputy is aware, a community nursing unit and a ten-bed crisis house for mental health are already under construction in Clonmel. The HSE has advised that the existing hospital site is not suitable for the new 60-bed community nursing unit. It has also advised that the site is very limited in size. Challenges with the amount of parking space and access to the building have been identified. I reass…

The development has been included in the capital plan since last year and will go ahead.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue, which I am taking on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly. As the Deputy will be aware, GPs are private practitioners, although most GPs hold contracts with the HSE to provide services under public health schemes. There are currently 2,539 GPs with a general medical services, GMS, contract for the provision of GP services without charge to medical card and GP visit card holders. As they are private practitioners, GPs are free to establish their practice and work…

I do not have a response in respect of primary care centres at the moment but I know the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, was in counties Sligo and Donegal last Friday to open three primary care centres. Nine primary care centres were announced in December last year. We have been building primary care centres for the past five or six years and rolling out eight or nine of them each year. I was delighted to announce one for Lismore in County Waterford a couple of weeks ago. I will check the latest details in respe…

I acknowledge how important the support of partners is to women throughout their pregnancy journey. It is also important that the partners be present as much as possible. The Deputy might have hit the nail on the head when she talked about some of the older buildings and some of the risk assessments. It is really important that we have evidence-based decision-making regarding restrictions. It is difficult for families at a joyful time if there are restrictions. We have 19 maternity hospitals. Perinatal mental healt…

I was expecting the Deputy's colleague, Deputy Ward, who is seated beside her, to take this question on behalf of Deputy Daly. Following the publication of the Maskey report, in order to gain assurance about the quality of the CAMHS service being provided in north Kerry, the HSE confirmed a planned sample file audit of 50 files in north Kerry CAMHS would take place. This was a random audit of files and represents approximately 10% of the caseload of the north Kerry CAMHS teams. I make that point to ensure there is …

I know the Deputy is asking this question on behalf of her party colleague but I do not agree the status is unclear. It is crystal clear. On 21 January 2023, the local HSE office received a final report from the team of CAMHS consultants who had carried out the audit. When concerns were raised by the audit team in respect of individual children, immediate contact was made with the families and clinical reviews and open disclosure meetings were facilitated as appropriate. Contact was also made with the families of t…

I thank both Deputies for their questions. As I was going to say in response to Deputy Funchion, we are all very aware of the challenges we have in CAMHS throughout the country and of the fact waiting lists are going in only one direction, which the Minister and I are very unhappy about. We speak about it constantly. One thing Deputy Ward did not mention is that there were 33% more referrals to CAMHS in the past two years than ever before, and the teams saw 21% more children than ever before. The number of referral…

If I can answer, 225,000 appointments were given to children in the care of CAMHS last year. Ninety-one people were added to mental health staffing between December 2021 and December 2022. It is not that we are not acting. To drive CAMHS reform, I am holding a series of roundtable discussions with key CAMHS stakeholders. The first meeting, to be held this afternoon, will involve the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland, the HSE and the Department. In the next two weeks, there will be further meetings with NGOs relat…

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. The mid-west CAMHS leadership team works in partnership with clinical directors for the national clinical programmes to develop new models of practice to meet the needs of children and families in the mid-west. The HSE has advised my Department that the mid-west community healthcare mental health service has one CAMHS centre in Ennis, which is used by both the Clare west and Clare east CAMHS teams. There are a couple of reasons behind this. As the Deputy knows - I do not …

My budget does not run for only three months of the year. It runs from 1 January to 31 December and much of the spending happens throughout the year as we recruit. For example, last year we recruited 91 new people to mental health services. Some 10,362 people were working in mental health services in December 2021 and in December 2022 the number was 10,453. The budget runs for the whole year. It is important to acknowledge that there were 33% more referrals into CAMHS supports in the past two years. The total numbe…

The whole purpose of the CAMHS hubs is to prevent people having to travel if they have this option. That is what we are trying to do, to give parents and children more options. With respect to the follow-up of the 140 cases the Deputy referred to that were classed as lost, the team in Limerick informed the Mental Health Commission that it had a significant staffing issue at that time. It was down three consultant psychiatrists. They have now been put in place. We now have a full complement of seven consultant psych…

Thanks for amending our motion.

Keep objecting.

The confidence motion triggered by the Labour Party today essentially proposes a very simple choice for us as Members of this House. On the one hand, Deputies are being asked to vote in favour of collapsing the Dáil, provoking a general election and going into government with the Labour Party to set to work on delivering the 1 million homes promised by the party's leader over the weekend. Based on the Labour Party's previous record in the housing portfolio, we are unlikely to see this happening. The Labour Party is…

This morning, I had to cancel my visit to St. Loman's psychiatric hospital, Mullingar, to be present here today-----

-----while the Opposition has a race to the bottom in populist politics.

I thank the Deputy for her question. To date, we have managed to reopen 92% of the nursing homes that were open before the Covid-19 pandemic. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we took the opportunity to carry out a risk assessment of every premises to see whether it was suitable from the point of view of infection prevention and control measures and the basics, that is, simple things such as having hot water in the bathrooms. We are trying to work through the issues in any that have difficulties. I will get a detailed …

I thank the Deputy for her question. A decision to place any young person into an adult psychiatric unit is never taken lightly. We have four units in Ireland, namely, one in Merlin Park in Galway, two in Dublin and one in Cork, for the taking into care of children and young people under the age of 18. On 20 occasions last year a young person - in 90% of the cases the person involved was 17 years of age - had to be placed into an adult psychiatric unit for their own support. A decision to do this will only be taken…