Mr. Colm Leonard:

I am conscious that the primary legislation, the Ombudsman for Children Act, does not permit us to have a complaint-handling function in regard to clinical issues, but we do have authority where the administrative actions of public bodies and services may have had an adverse effect on children.

On the type of profile to which the Deputy referred, the individuals pseudonymously called Mark, Emma Lucas and Shane in the report Nowhere to Turn meet the profile referred to. There are children who come from families with multiple problems. Considering the matter from an environmental perspective, one sees they have complex needs and dual diagnoses. Sometimes diagnoses change over time and sometimes clinicians can have different opinions, creating further difficulties for children and families.

It is a matter of access to services, assessment and follow-up intervention. Assessments of need and further assessments for mental health issues can take so long, but the interventions required following assessments are quite often lacking, and this is how the children in the case studies were let down.