I want to raise an issue that was brought up by Mr. Peter Hughes, the general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association who warned that the HSE recruitment embargo is seriously impacting service delivery. He said that the current situation, with more than 700 vacancies, was not sustainable and that reliance on overtime and agency staff could not meet the increase in demand for services. He said:

We conducted a survey of our branches last month and it showed that we had more over 700 vacancies in the system. We just think it is totally inconceivable that they are imposing a recruitment embargo at a time of such an amount of vacancies. This is seriously impacting the delivery of services.

Mr. Hughes also spoke about a lack of beds, a lack of provisions and about issues relating to Linn Dara.

I thank the Deputy for raising the conference of the Psychiatric Nurses Association. When I finish here, I am heading to Trim, County Meath to address that conference at 3.50 p.m. I engage constantly with Mr. Hughes and the PNA. I thank them for all of the work they do. They often work with some of the most complex and vulnerable people in the country.

I want to put something on the record of the Dáil because it was referred to earlier. There are issues in relation to psychiatric nurse staffing for inpatient facilities for CAMHS. The current situation as we stand is that we have 51 beds staffed. We have young people in 31 of the beds. We have 20 beds available and there is no waiting list. It is important to put that on the record. I will be speaking about this further this afternoon.