Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the Members who have contributed to this lively and emotive debate tonight. I also want to acknowledge both Ministers of State for staying for the whole of the debate because that does not happen all of the time. I thank Deputy Daly and Daniel Curtin from Deputy Cullinane's office for helping to draft the motion this week. We will be accepting the amendments that have been put down by other Deputies because they add to the motion rather than detracting from it.

It is all well and good that the Government is not opposing the motion but it needs to support it and it needs to put in place all of the measures that Sinn Féin is calling for. It has been a Government tactic over the last while to not oppose motions and to let them go through, which means the Government does not have to vote against them. In particular, it is a tactic the Government has been using on recent Sinn Féin motions or Bills. However, this is on children's mental health. The people will see through this if everything in the Sinn Féin motion is not implemented. If things do not start moving in the right direction, they will see this as gamesmanship and brinkmanship, and just allowing something to go through. They need to see the Government committing to what we have put into this motion because, if it does not, the public will not be forgiving.

The first thing we need to do, and the Government has committed to this, is to get things in place for those children who were affected in south Kerry. We need to put a comprehensive care plan in place, whatever it takes, in order that these children get the services they need immediately and they can start getting themselves and their families back on the road to recovery.

One of the things I did not get a chance to touch on in my earlier contribution relates to the draconian practice of putting children into adult mental health facilities, although I spoke about this in the debate with the Minister of State last week. On the back of this motion, the Government is saying it will support legislation to stop that. I am letting the Minister of State know that at the Joint Sub-Committee on Mental Health, on the mental health legislation, I will be tabling amendments and seeking the support of the Minister of State on that. I will work with the Minister of State and I will offer to put safeguards in place to stop this happening. There is a way around this. I am not saying it is the fault of the Minister of State. My understanding is that the reason this is not being legislated for is because it protects the Government and the State from any recourse people have if children end up going into adult facilities. Plain and simple, this loophole must be closed.

I also acknowledge the non-adversarial scheme for compensation, which is welcome. We need to learn from the mistakes of the past, such as CervicalCheck. It did not work out as everybody thought it would work out. This non-adversarial scheme became very adversarial. We need to learn from its mistakes and make sure that this is a comprehensive, easy-to-access scheme for all the families involved.

The Minister of State made a point about Private Members' business in the past and said that we did not include the national clinical director. I did a Google search. It was definitely in our Private Members' business on emergency response with regard to Covid. It was also in our pre-budget submission. It is something that we have been calling for for a long time. There are other matters in the motion that we need to look at, which were mentioned by other Members. We have to look at how whistle-blowers are treated. We need to encourage them to come forward if there is a problem. We hope to get to a stage where there are no problems, but, in the meantime, we need to put in place something in order that whistle-blowers feel comfortable about coming forward and they are not pushed to the side or out of the service. These are a couple of things that we will look to do.

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