Ms Caoilfhionn Gallagher:

I am very grateful. I thank the Deputy for raising those questions. Regarding CAMHS, the position is that every child has the right to the highest attainable standard of health, including mental health. It is quite clear from Dr. Susan Finnerty's report that this is not the case. I also commend to the committee, many of whom will have seen it, a document published by the Ombudsman for Children in May entitled "A Piece of My Mind", a mental health survey of more than 2,000 children. The results show that 42% of those children who had accessed CAMHS said the service they received did not help with their mental health. This was a shocking figure. Almost half of the children who had used CAMHS said that it simply did not help, which is a very concerning figure that Dr. Muldoon was quite right to draw attention to.

Regarding what needs to be done in CAMHS, I am conscious that I have an oversight role. Child protection is a very broad topic. The matters identified by Dr. Finnerty in her final report are the matters on which we should focus. She has identified a range of very serious issues and set out a detailed range of recommendations. It seems to me to be critical that we turn to them. I very much agree with the Deputy regarding her concern about the IT system. That is the fundamental mismatch. How can one of the richest countries in Europe have a situation where Dr. Finnerty can use language like that - "amongst the worst in the world for IT infrastructure in youth mental health services"? This is shameful and is something we must address as a matter of urgency.

I may come back to the Deputy regarding the issue she raised about DEIS rather than giving her an answer now. She raised an important point and I would like to consider it further and revert to her in writing.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has a very long list of recommendations. I am not sure how many members of the committee have had the opportunity to look through the list that has been set out. For me in my role, that is a yardstick by which we can measure the Government's commitment to child protection, particularly in those six areas where the UN committee has said these are urgently required. There is a range of other issues that the committee has not said are urgently required but they are still on the list but those six topics are of such critical importance. This is why in my first annual report, I will measure where we are compared to that yardstick. During my three years in post from February 2023, I intend to return to this yardstick again and again. I hope the committee will return to it again and again because it is the international standard that Ireland is supposed to meet. It was clear in February 2023 that we were found wanting and it seems to me that each and every item on that list of urgent measures identified by the UN committee must be adopted. I am afraid that many of them require more resources to be allocated, which is why I highlighted the issue of resources in my opening statement.