Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is correct. There are 35 recommendations in the report and six of those recommendations are already complete. If memory serves me, I said last night that 13 of them are being progressed and the rest have yet to commence. I will be keeping in close contact with the HSE to make sure these recommendations are in place.

One part of the review we are doing is in regard to the 72 CAMHS teams dealing with those children who are medicated. As we know, out of 1,000 of the case files in Kerry, 500 children were medicated and 500 were not. We are going to do an audit of those children throughout the country who are medicated to find whether this raises red flags. What we are also doing is looking at the standard operating procedures for all CAMHS teams that were introduced in 2015, with the guidance having been updated in 2019. We are also doing an audit to see that those checks and balances are in place.

The most important thing to do is to make sure that any parent who brings a child to CAMHS anywhere in the country has confidence in the service. I know Paul Reid, the chief executive of the HSE, said earlier today that it is working out the details of how these audits will be carried out. I am in close contact with the Department and the HSE. The audits will be done in a timely manner and it is important that they are independent. It is also important that standard operating procedures regarding all CAMHS teams are enforced.

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