Parents across the country have been telling me of the difficulties they are experiencing in the context of their children accessing appropriate mental health care. They talk to me about hurdle after hurdle and being handed off from one service to another service, with no actual proper service being provided for their children. One parent told me how their child had been refused support, despite expressing suicidal ideation. Another father told me that their child had been admitted to accident and emergency six times - three times for suicide attempts - before support was put in place. Another child was discharged from hospital without there being any follow-up support put in place or doctors being informed of their suicidal ideation. This is not only exasperating and frightening for families, it is deeply harmful to those children. They have been left in crisis with nowhere to turn. These families expressed utter shock and, in certain cases, revulsion about the fact that the State spends so little on the mental health budget. What is being spent is well below both what was recommended in the Sláintecare report and what is spent in the UK.

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----

With the greatest of respect to the Minister of State, a suicidal child meets the criteria.

We will continue to invest in mental health services.