I wish to raise the urgent need for reform of child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. Serious concerns about CAMHS have been raised here repeatedly by me and many other Deputies over recent years. A review of CAMHS was conducted by the Mental Health Commission and the Maskey report on CAMHS in Kerry was published recently but we have seen no action to improve the situation. Around 22,000 children who were referred to CAMHS are languishing on waiting lists in what is a failed system.

The Government has been abysmal with regard to fulfilling promises made before the election and in the programme for Government. The latest report from the Children's Rights Alliance assigned an E grade to the Government because of the continuing inhumane practice of admitting children to adult psychiatric units. This is disgraceful. We have had report after report and broken promise after broken promise. The Tánaiste will no doubt refer to recruitment issues and so on but it is simply not good enough. We saw what happened in Kerry and it has to be sorted out.

A nationwide audit of CAMHS was carried out and while there are clearly huge challenges and deficiencies in some parts of the country, in other parts of the country many of the centres are providing a good service. That said, it is not where we want it to be. No child should be admitted to an adult psychiatric facility. The numbers of such children are way down on what they were previously but one child being admitted to an adult psychiatry ward is one child too many. It is a priority area. There is a new mental health lead in the HSE now, appointed by the Minister of State, Deputy Butler. She had sought that from the HSE for quite some time. That has been agreed and is now in place.