Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yes, to deal with her disorder. She spent almost nine months there, during which time her father passed away. The tragedy is that when she left that setting she was referred back to CAMHS, which had neglected her in the first place. She is back to the same weight she was when she was admitted to the hospital in the first place. We are failing, and failing miserably. While the girl is back at school, her mother attends school every day to ensure she eats her lunch. In a year and a half, no inroads have been made in her mental healthcare except to put her back to where she started. There was no intervention in the 90 days she was in University Hospital Waterford. She lost more than 7 kg in weight and no questions were raised. That is failure and I do not care who is responsible but I want it to be addressed. I may never be back here again and I understand Mr. Gloster has a serious task on his hands. I watched his progress because I told him I would give him a chance. He is making progress but it is a mammoth task he has. For all the good we do, this child could have died but will spend her lifetime, if ever, trying to recover because we failed during the 90 days she was in a hospital for no reason with virtually no help.

We are failing our staff also because the hospital was not able to deal with it. The staff had no training. There was an adult dietician who clearly was doing her best but was out of her depth because this was a 15-year-old. I find it incredible that this has not been addressed even though Mr. Gloster was aware of it from the last day here. Not only that, the only provision she could be offered when she was released from the mental health setting that dealt with the anorexia in the first place was to put her back to a CAMHS service that was not fully staffed and did not provide fully for her care in the first place, which is how she ended up in hospital. It is value for money-----