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

There is more evidence today of the crisis in the health system. Covid shone a light on a hopelessly dysfunctional, fragmented, under-resourced and understaffed health service and brought us to the brink but all that dysfunction, fragmentation and lack of resources and staff is coming back to bite us quickly in the aftermath of the pandemic, especially in the context of emergency departments being overrun and what we saw in north Kerry child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, which is widespread. Why are we failing to recruit and retain the staff that are necessary in order to provide the health service that we need? One problem I would put to the Taoiseach is that when I asked the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, for a review of the over-medication of children by CAMHS because of the lack of staff last April, he did not answer the question directly but bounced it on to the HSE, which then gave me a pro formaanswer which stated that there would not be a review. I asked a question in April regarding a general review of the over-medication of young people by CAMHS because of the lack of staffing, which, I believe, is widespread and is not limited to north Kerry, last April. The Minister for Health - this is standard practice when you ask the Department of Health for anything - stated that he was not going to answer the question and that he would bang it on to the HSE because it was responsible for it. This begs the question as to what the Department of Health and the Minister responsible for. The HSE gave me a pro formaanswer indicating that it would not conduct a review and now we have the scandal with regard to what happened in north Kerry. Is the lack of a proper, integrated, properly governed health service part of the reason nobody wants to work in it?

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