Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I bring up the issue of the difficulty for autistic kids and their families in accessing necessary mental health services. I have just come from a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on autism with Families for Reform of CAMHS. We all know the ping-pong game that has existed between disability services and CAMHS. At times, it has been a case of no room at the inn if somebody has autism. I was told that the autism protocol was meant to deal with this but my understanding is it is not in operation across all community healthcare organisations, CHOs. That is something that needs to happen. Another issue Families for Reform of CAMHS brought up relates to CAMHS intellectual disability teams. Since September 2021, if a child has an intellectual disability, a regular CAMHS team will not see him or her. There are ten consultants, some of whom have no CAMHS team or only one or two. These are all issues that need to be dealt with. I will use the example of a 12-year-old child-----

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