The mother of a 16-year-old girl who is suicidal has appealed to the Health Service Executive to provide an inpatient psychiatric bed for her daughter.
The girl has been attending a psychiatrist and psychologist for the past three years since it emerged she was raped over a period of years by her mother's former partner, who is now serving a jail sentence.
But her mother said yesterday her daughter now needs an inpatient bed in a psychiatric unit as she constantly wants to kill herself.
At present she is in Wexford General Hospital but needs a bed in a psychiatric unit where she can receive specialist help.
"I'm just worried out of my mind over her and she is just fading away, she won't eat or anything," she said.
She added that her daughter was begging her to help her to take her life. "This is a crying shame that she has to do this and these things are happening to her before she can get help," she told the News at One on RTÉ radio.
"We are trying to get her a bed in a hospital in Dublin but we can't get a bed.
"If I pay I can get a bed . . . I wouldn't have the money to pay, I'm unemployed," she said.
"I'm begging and begging to get this bed for this child. It has to come out of somewhere," she added.
In a statement the HSE said it aims to provide "the best possible treatment within resources available to it".
It said there is a standing arrangement and referral system in operation between the HSE and providers of specialist child and adolescent inpatient treatments in the private sector, such as at the St John of God's treatment facility in Dublin.
"The HSE is in continued clinical contact with such a facility as regards the availability of places to accommodate referrals, such as from professionals with the Wexford community services area," it added.
Paul Kehoe, a Fine Gael TD for Wexford, said it was totally unacceptable a mother had to go to her local TD or the media seeking help for a child in these kind of circumstances.
"I don't think it would happen in any other country.
"It's totally scandalous and outrageous the way children and teenagers with mental health problems are being treated by this Government and the HSE," he said.
"This is going on for about three or four weeks and it's really critical at this stage . . . I'm not sure the HSE and the Minister actually understand the urgency of this problem," he added.
Furthermore he said it was not a problem that had occurred overnight. The shortage of inpatient beds for children and adolescents with psychiatric problems was well known for years.