MINISTER FOR HEALTH Stephen Donnelly said today that he believes smartphones should be banned in schools because of the negative impact they have on children and teens’ mental health. 

Donnelly was responding to the latest Mental Health Commission (MHC) reports published today which looked into the provision of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in each of the nine community healthcare organisation (CHO) areas of the Health Service Executive (HSE).

The reports found that in total over 4,450 individuals are on waiting lists around the country.

The Minister said that he is working with the HSE to continue reducing the waiting list and that the HSE has “the full support of Government”. 

“We are expanding the services, we are addressing the issues that have been raised by the Mental Health Commission but that on its own isn’t going to be enough,” the Minister said. 

“We have to look at this holistically and understand what is causing this very, very significant need for mental health services and youth mental health services and start tackling those things right at the root.”

Donnelly said a key area of the Government and HSE’s youth mental health strategy is prevention and noted that mobile phone use and internet use are one of the elements of this. 

Speaking to reporters in Dublin, Donnelly said: “I think there should be a ban on smartphones in schools. I do.”

“There is incontrovertible evidence from the US Surgeon General, from the EU parliament, from the UK, from around the world that certain types of mobile phone use, internet access, internet use, is causing enormous damage to young people.

“We’re seeing direct causal relationships between increased access to mobile phones and social media, along with increases in suicide ideation, self harm, anxiety, and many other issues that our mental health services have to deal with.”

Donnelly said he has engaged with Education Minister Norma Foley on this issue and pointed to the ‘It takes a Village’ project in Greystones which supports primary school children with issues around anxiety.

In May, it was reported that parents in a Wicklow primary school were the latest to sign up to a voluntary code to hold off on the purchase of smartphones for children until they hit second-level.

Donnelly also acknowledged the schools in Wexford that have got together and banned smartphones. 

Earlier this month, a new United Nations’ report also called for a global ban on smartphones in school.

Donnelly said he believes a voluntary approach from schools and parents would work best. 

“That’s what we’ve seen in Greystones, it was the parents supported by the eight fantastic primary school principals. In Wexford, it was the schools [who] have done it.

Any parent I talked to about this, and most of the students I talked to about this, say, ‘Oh, God, please do it.’

“So we probably don’t need a ban. I think if we could even just facilitate the schools and the parents on a voluntary basis, to just say, this is better for everybody, let’s just crack on. And we’re now seeing schools beginning to do that.”