On behalf of the Social Democrats, I join others in paying tribute to Tommie Gorman. He had a stand-out career in public service broadcasting. My thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues.

I am glad that the relevant Minister and Minister of State are present in the Chamber today. The group Mind EveryBody is in the audiovisual room as we speak and is trying to bring home the reality of how desperately people with eating disorders in this country need support. I do not know how to emphasise this enough. I have been raising this issue for years now. Over the years, I have spoken to women who have been forced to speak publicly and set up GoFundMe pages to try to get inpatient care for eating disorders. I have spoken to parents who are at their wits’ ends because they are quite literally watching their children wasting away while there is no support available to them. I have spoken to people who work in the NHS who are seeing Irish women going over to the UK to get the care they need because they simply cannot access it at home and are at death's door. That reality just does not seem represented in the Government's response. There has been zero in funding for inpatient beds for this over the past six years. Respectfully, I ask that instead of referring to care in the community - because I welcome the changes in that regard – the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, respond on the absence of inpatient beds for people with eating disorders.

I have just come from a meeting with a group called the Child and Adolescent Regional Eating Disorder Service, which was meant to be in the audiovisual room this afternoon. Due to the fact that another organisation which promotes supports for people with eating disorders was already presenting, however, the group whose representatives I just met pulled its presentation.

It is important to note that 90% of people with eating disorders do get care in the community. The Deputy cannot avoid that fact. When I came into this post in 2020, there was one eating disorder team in place and two other teams were funded.

Will the Minister of State please address the issue of inpatient beds?

Please, Deputy.

As I stand here, 11 eating disorder teams are in place and a further team has been funded. We need to get to 16. A total of 12 have been funded and 11 are in place. Our focus now is on inpatient beds. We have done a full review of mental health bed capacity throughout the whole country, and I want to see a geographical spread of eating disorder beds for adults.

There has been no funding allocated for that.