Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am replacing Deputy Gino Kenny who cannot be here because he lost his mother this week. I am trying to catch up and familiarise myself with all the reports and so on from this committee in the past.

Following on from Deputy Hourigan's questioning, the answers seem to imply that a team will function properly where there is a consultant and overmedication, such as what happened in Kerry, would not happen. I ask for a comment on that implication. Are there any cases where consultants are in a situation where the overmedication of children is a regular occurrence? I am looking at the notes from the reports of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Future of Mental Health in 2018, which referenced a 2011 report from Mental Health Reform that showed there were:

significant gaps in primary care provision, [a] dominance of medication as a treatment option, [a] lack of referral options for GPs...[for] counselling, [for] psychotherapy...[a lack of] family therapy or Community...Health Teams [and] Continued use of Emergency Departments as access points for mental health services

It seems we are probably living in a system where consultants, or whomever, have little option but to medicate because other services are not available. I would like the representatives to comment on that.

My second question relates to parliamentary questions asked by Deputy Boyd Barrett. As far back as 2015, he has asked various Ministers for Health parliamentary questions about the kind of malpractice we are now dealing with, such as the overmedication of children. Last April, specifically, he asked the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, to "order a...review of the use and overuse of psychiatric medication in children across all CAMHS...services" and in particular to review the way chronic understaffing of CAMHS, and a complete failure to resource primary care, was leading to overmedication. Deputy Boyd Barrett says the Minister passed this review off to the HSE, which apparently brushed off the request for review. That goes back to April 2021. Did the Minister pass this request for review to HSE management? What was its response to that? Those are two very specific questions.