Dr. Niall Muldoon:

On CAMHS, it is coming up to the one-year anniversary since it was published in July 2023. It was a hugely damning report. Members might remember the senior inspector in the Mental Health Commission could not reassure the parents of Ireland that the CAMHS system was safe. It cannot get worse than that as far as I am concerned. The senior inspector asked for immediate legislation in order that the Mental Health Commission could regulate CAMHS. That has not been forthcoming. That is the first step that had to happen. The senior inspector wanted an immediate strategic plan to be put in place in order that we knew exactly what was going to happen with CAMHS. That has not been put in place. There has been a move, in that two new positions,namely, clinical leads in CAMHS and clinical leads in youth mental health are now in place. They are trying to work with it but from what I can tell, they are working within the same system. They are not looking to change the system an awful lot or to investigate better ways of doing things but they are looking to shore up the system, which may not be the way forward. I thought we had to start from scratch. I thought we had to really look at it and say this is not working, we need to find a new way of doing it. Again, I will be writing to the Minister for Health himself and not just to the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, as well as the relevant people within the Department of Health about the follow up. It is my understanding that without the regulation in place for the Mental Health Commission, it is not going to be able to follow it up itself because it has full-time work with the adult units and all the other elements it does. We will be following up on that as well but again, nine months or ten months later, it is highly unsatisfactory that we have not got any change or movement that is of major importance at this point.