Long before a young person ever reaches a CAMHS waiting list, a much bigger and quieter network is now trying to catch them first. Ireland spent 2025 and 2026 building that early-support net faster than at any point before: new Jigsaw hubs opening their doors, a national action plan aimed squarely at children and teenagers, and referral numbers climbing in a way that says as much about growing trust as it does about growing need.
A plan built specifically for young people
Most coverage of youth mental health in Ireland understandably focuses on specialist CAMHS waiting lists. But behind that system, the HSE has been quietly building an entirely separate layer of support aimed at catching problems early, before a young person ever needs a specialist referral. The HSE Child and Youth Mental Health Office published its first-ever 3 Year Action Plan in February 2025, setting out 16 actions for reforming how children and young people access mental health support, with the explicit goal of making services easier to reach and more consistent across the country.
That plan sits inside the wider Sharing the Vision Implementation Plan 2025-2027, launched by Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister for Mental Health Mary Butler at Dublin Castle in April 2025, which commits to a national model of care for child and youth mental health and a new single point of access designed to smooth the handover between different services.
Minister Butler frames the goal simply: reach young people earlier, before a difficulty becomes a crisis, on the basis that a well-funded early-intervention layer should, over time, ease pressure further up the system, including on specialist CAMHS teams. The 16 actions in the Child and Youth Mental Health Office's plan include commitments to standardise how services are delivered regardless of where a young person lives, and to build better data-sharing between schools, GPs and youth services so a young person does not have to repeat their story at every step of a referral.
Jigsaw's biggest expansion in years
The clearest sign of that investment landing in communities is Jigsaw, the National Centre for Youth Mental Health, which offers free, confidential, early-intervention support to 12 to 25 year olds without needing a GP referral. Budget 2026 gave Jigsaw an additional 1.3 million euro in recurring funding to establish new services, including its first-ever base in Waterford city, serving the south-east, and extra capacity in Clare through its Limerick team.
Jigsaw Waterford opened its doors on 31 August 2026, the newest addition to a network Jigsaw describes as now covering 18, soon to be 20, locations around the country. Waterford had been the only city in Ireland without a Jigsaw service, and local youth council Comhairle na nOg had lobbied for it for several years before the funding was secured. Jigsaw CEO Dr Joseph Duffy said the expansion means young people can get support locally, without long waits or complex referral processes, adding that early, local and accessible support can change the trajectory of a young person's life.
The scale of demand shows why this matters. Jigsaw's 2025 annual report recorded 11,064 referrals across the year, the highest in the charity's 20-year history and a 23% rise on 2024. That momentum has continued into 2026, with 3,909 referrals in the first quarter alone, up 33% on the same period last year. Duffy attributes part of the rise to something genuinely positive: more young people are willing to come forward at all, thanks to falling stigma and programmes like Jigsaw's Moving On initiative, which supports 12 year olds moving from primary to secondary school and often draws whole families into contact with services for the first time.
New Discovery Colleges and specialist teams
Budget 2026 funding is also going towards five new Discovery Colleges for young people, building on the existing centre in Roscommon. These are peer-led education and workshop programmes for 12 to 25 year olds, co-designed with people who have lived experience of mental health difficulties alongside professionals, aimed at building skills and resilience rather than delivering clinical treatment.
Alongside these community supports, the government says it is progressing a digital single point of access for youth mental health services, a new specialist CAMHS eating disorder team, and two new Mental Health of Intellectual Disability teams specifically for children, according to Minister of State Mary Butler's answer to the Dail in June 2026. Total mental health funding for 2026 stands at almost 1.6 billion euro, including around 191 million euro for specialist CAMHS and 127 million euro channelled to community and voluntary organisations such as Jigsaw.
The Discovery College model sits deliberately between informal peer support and formal clinical treatment, offering short courses on topics such as managing anxiety, understanding self-harm, or coping with exam stress, taught jointly by trained peer facilitators and mental health professionals. The approach began in the UK's Recovery College movement and has been adapted for a younger age group here, with the Roscommon college used as the template for the five new sites being rolled out under Budget 2026 funding.
Wait times down, but demand still testing capacity
Jigsaw's own figures show the trade-off it is managing. Its 2025 annual report recorded that the typical wait for a first appointment fell nationally from around eight weeks to four, helped by the introduction of Single Session First therapy, offering support at first contact rather than after a longer assessment process. Jigsaw delivered 62,235 clinical contacts in 2025, including 49,335 direct sessions with young people, and reported that 66% of young people showed measurable improvement in their goals, exceeding its own targets, while 89% of young people and families said they were satisfied with the service.
That progress has not landed evenly everywhere. Jigsaw's Director of Services, Sarah Cullinane, told the Irish Examiner in January 2026 that some smaller, more rural services found the 23% jump in referrals especially hard to manage, with waits in Cork and Galway both hitting around 10 to 12 weeks at points during the year before falling back to seven weeks by December as services adjusted. Nationally, 83% of young people were seen within a month in the second half of 2025, up from 40% in 2024, but Cullinane said sustaining that improvement depends on staffing, and recruiting in rural areas remains difficult.
Jigsaw's pre-budget submission for 2027, published in August 2026, warns that referrals rose a further 39% during 2026 alone and that the efficiencies which protected wait times over the past two years have now been exhausted, meaning further investment will be needed to stop waits creeping up again. The charity is seeking an additional 800,000 euro in recurring funding for extra clinical staff in the areas facing the greatest demand, plus 2 million euro to expand access into areas of significant unmet need, as it works towards what it calls a clear pathway to national coverage.
Parents and school staff have become a growing focus of Jigsaw's work too, alongside direct support for young people themselves. The charity runs training programmes for teachers and youth workers aimed at helping adults recognise early warning signs and respond calmly, on the basis that a young person's first conversation about a mental health difficulty often happens with a parent, teacher or coach rather than a professional, and that equipping those adults with basic skills and clear referral pathways can stop a problem escalating before it ever reaches a Jigsaw hub or a CAMHS waiting list.
The Bottom Line
The story of youth mental health in Ireland isn't only about CAMHS waiting times; it's also about a growing web of services reaching young people well before they need a specialist referral at all. Jigsaw's expansion into Waterford and Clare, new Discovery Colleges, and a dedicated three-year national action plan all point to a system trying to widen its front door. Referral numbers climbing sharply reflect real, rising need, but they also reflect something worth celebrating: more young people than ever are willing to ask for help, and more places are opening for them to do it.
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