Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming in. I sit on a number of committees, one of which is the Joint Committee on Autism. Last week we had the privilege of having a number of parents of autistic children before us to outline the different things that were going on in their children's lives and the difficulties they were facing. Specifically, a number of parents highlighted difficulties with the CAMHS service for their autistic children. The timing is excellent. This happened last week in the committee room next door. Karen O'Mahony is the CEO of the Rainbow Centre in Cork, which is a truly excellent centre for autistic children. It does a lot of private fundraising and genuinely helps parents through a load of a different issues. Ms O'Mahony has a son who is 16 and 6 ft 2 in. When he was five or six years old, he was put on psychiatric medication. For the first four or five years of that treatment, Ms O'Mahony told the committee, he was seen every three months and the doctor monitored his height, weight, his general well-being and his reaction to the medication, as is appropriate for psychiatric medication for a child. Then when he was 11, the doctor changed. He was seen once and then the doctor said he was signed off. I asked Ms O'Mahony what "signed off" means. She said she did not know. He has not seen a doctor or had any supervision since. He is 16 and he is 6 ft 2 in. He has had significant physical development, emotional development and personal development, as all adolescents do. He is an autistic child who has been prescribed mind-altering medication by the State and he has not been seen for five years. I understand from the briefing notes provided that there are close to 9,000 whole-time equivalents in CHO 4, some 1,578 of whom work within the mental health service. Whose job is it, of those 1,578, to check this child? Whose job is it to check that the check has been done?