Dr. Amir Niazi:

First of all, whatever was mentioned in the commission's report, many of those initiatives were already being taken. Following the publication of the Maskey report, a lot of work was started in CAMHS. We were aware of most of those things which were highlighted in the report. In fact, we provided most of that information to the commission when it came to visit our sites. In relation to the audits, there are not three, but seven audits in CAMHS. The Deputy mentioned three of them and we have started two more. There is one on patients who have not been seen within six months who have lost a follow-up, and one on the neuroleptic medication and the physical health monitoring. The commission did its own audit and the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland also did its own audit. There were seven audits done in total. Out of the three that the Deputy has mentioned, the prescribing audit was completed last week and we are hoping to make the findings available in the coming week. The findings of that audit are very similar those of the commission report. The teams are performing at 90% to 95% in most of the areas. The data were collected anonymously. All the patients were coded with numbers and the data were looked at. To improve that further, we are now are decoding all the data and going back to the individual teams to identify where the gaps were to see how we can improve it. I am also looking to get commentary on the shortfalls.

The audit covered a specific period, from July 2021 to December 2021. When we asked the team about the gap in physical health monitoring, it made it clear that it was in the middle of the pandemic. We were also facing the cyberattack. Most of the assessments were done virtually in front of a screen, so physical monitoring of the children was not possible. Even families were reluctant to bring children in for monitoring. If there were gaps, we have an idea as to why, but we are still going back to the teams to investigate the shortfalls and determine how we can improve.