Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is an extremely important debate. There are very serious charges here. It shows an absolute failure of the system to protect and to look after these children and their parents. Significant harm was suffered by 46 children over a four-year period, which is a lifetime for somebody with a mental health issue and their family. I question the supervision. Who is ensuring that the prescriptions are right? Who is watching them? What are the pharmacists and GPs doing?

A friend of mine who is a pharmacist told me that most of the medicine now comes already filled up and all he needs to do is put in distilled water. He said that his job is to ensure that doctors are providing the right prescriptions. That did not happen in this case. That is a serious charge and it needs to be dealt with. GPs also needed to answer for this, as do politicians here in the Oireachtas. This is a serious issue and it is not acceptable that it went on for so long, and was not identified and acted upon.

I agree with much of Deputy Lowry's analysis. Young people in my town are growing up in an area where there is a very serious drug problem and serious violence. A person who was a minor was murdered and his body was dismembered in our own town. There is enormous trauma for young people. This is not just in Drogheda, but throughout the country. We need a state-of-the-art system that works for them so that they can get support and get help. The professionals need to reach out to families and ensure they are looked after.

I acknowledge the work Government has done regarding the criminality and other serious problems in Drogheda. I refer to the Guerin report. That has been dealt with very effectively by the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, the Minister for Education and so on. People in communities are suffering as a result of drug abuse and crime. There are serious mental health issues arising in young families. The normality for young people is a hell because they have nowhere to go. They cannot even say where they are from because in many cases their communities have such a bad name.

If anything comes out of this, it needs to be change on the part of the professional bodies. They all need to tell the Minister of State what their plans are to deal with this in the future. These things need to be reviewed, either on a quarterly or whatever is deemed an appropriate basis. Most importantly, we must reach out to the communities where mental health problems are growing and not reducing, where crime is rampant and drugs are the order of the day. We need to change it practically. I hope this debate will help that change.

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