Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To build confidence in the 73 CAMHS teams around the country, where a huge amount of really good work is done on a daily basis, I felt it was very important, with the support of the Minister, to initiate a sample random audit of children throughout the country who were being prescribed medications. Dr. Maskey looked at 1,300 files in Kerry and we discovered 1,000 files showing that 500 children were medicated without having any adverse reactions and another 500 were not medicated. We then discovered there were issues with the 227 remaining files. This look-back was initiated by way of a sample taken of 50 files that were randomly audited. That raised red flags straight away. We will adopt a similar structure throughout the 73 CAMHS teams across the country. I believe this template will work. If it is necessary then to do a look-back into a particular team, we certainly will do so.

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