Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies Ward and Daly for their timely and good motion to address the scandal that arose from, but is in no way limited to, what happened in CAMHS in Kerry. As Deputy Gino Kenny said, we have tabled an amendment that does not take anything from the motion but adds a few additional refinements. Specifically, it sets out that the review of CAMHS has to be independent, as Deputy Kenny said; that the cases of other whistleblowers and instances of whistleblowers being sidelined, victimised and witch-hunted, including cases that I am aware of, are investigated; that in having a proactive recruitment and retention strategy for psychologists, which is critical, we also have speech and language and occupational therapists across CAMHS, as well as early intervention teams and primary care services which either do not exist or are massively understaffed; that we set up a psychology team in every school as there are currently few if any psychology services; that we remove all fees and financial obstacles to the qualification of people who are studying for degrees, master's degrees or doctorates in areas such as psychology, speech and language therapy and occupational therapy; and that there is proper funding for psychiatry, higher degrees and so on, which is an issue I have raised on multiple occasions. We have a chronic shortage of these staff across early intervention teams, primary care and the CAMHS teams. That is at the root of this scandal. Yet, we are doing the insane thing of making it as difficult as possible for people who want to become qualified in psychology, with doctorates or master's degrees, or in occupational therapy, speech and language therapy or psychiatry. We are making it as difficult as we possibly can for them to get qualified. What sort of insanity is that? We have said again and again that those fees, financial obstacles and the necessary funding for those courses need to be put in place.

Forty-six children have had their mental health and well-being badly damaged by the very services that were supposed to protect, help and support them. That is a scandal but what is shocking, as everybody knows, is that this is not limited to north Kerry. This is a particularly horrendous incident which has had terrible consequences for families and children. Yet, the problem was well known by the Government, the HSE and Oireachtas committees. Indeed, it was flagged in 2006 in the brilliant A Vision for Change document. Its proposals were brought forward 16 years ago and never implemented. In fact, they were effectively watered down with the Sharing the Vision document because we could not implement the state-of-the-art strategy set out in 2006. If we had implemented it, we would not have had the problem we had in north Kerry and the problem we are seeing right across the services.

In April 2021, and I am sure I was not alone in doing so, I asked the following parliamentary question to the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly. It says a lot. I asked the Minister "if he will order a general review of the use and overuse of psychiatric medication in children across all CAMHS and primary care health services and in particular to review the way a lack of resources for alternative approaches is driving the overuse of medication given the concern in relation to the rapid rise in the use of psychiatric drugs in children". I asked that question in April 2021. The Minister did not answer the question but bounced it. He said that it was essentially not for him to answer. When I asked him to conduct a general review, he bounced it on to the HSE so that they could look at itself.

I got an answer at the end of June, two months later, in which the HSE ignored the request for a general review across all of CAMHS and muttered at the end that it would discuss the issue of overmedication with the CAMHS team in the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland. Did they discuss it? I bet they did not. I bet that was absolute horse crap. The HSE also said it would make efforts on the clinical governance issues. I want to know exactly what efforts it made after it answered that question because I bet the answer is "none". The HSE did not want to admit what was going on, as also happened in the case of Dr. Singh and many others. It was covering up for the fact that the service was massively under-resourced and managers were trying to deny the reality. The reality is that it compensated for the lack of resources for the CAMHS teams, the primary care teams, the early interventions and the lack of psychology services in schools colleges and so on with the overmedication of children. That is happening on a widespread basis and anyone who said anything was told to shut up or get out. That is what was going on. We have to get to the bottom of this very fast or more children will be damaged.

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