Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Last week, I put several questions to the Taoiseach about ethical standards in Fine Gael, and I have just been sitting here, as we all have, listening to the exchanges between Fine Gael and Sinn Féin over dodgy donations and funny money, we might say. I know we are going to return to the issue later.

I want to raise with the Taoiseach an issue that is very serious because of the enormous real-life harm and consequences that have been inflicted on children and families as a result. I am speaking about the damning report of the Mental Health Commission, which has made unequivocal findings about the failings across the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. They are appalling findings. One hundred and forty children have, apparently, been “lost” in the mid-west CAMHS system. There has been an abject failure to monitor children on anti-psychotic medication, chronic understaffing and long waiting lists. There have been two-year delays, we were told, for follow-up appointments, young people reaching 18 with no transition to adult services, and an appalling and endemic lack of organisation across the service.

The findings are shocking and, behind the staggering figures and statistics, there are real children and families, some of whom will suffer lifelong consequences as a result of the failings detailed in the report. I am thinking about the 46 children in south Kerry CAMHS found to have suffered significant harm, as detailed in a report we saw last year, and of the 13-year-old girl written about by Kitty Holland in yesterday's newspaper, who was told, when she was engaging in self-cutting, that she was too high risk to receive help from the charity Jigsaw but not high risk enough to receive support from CAMHS. This was a child with a suicidal diagnosis, left in limbo. It is unthinkable that this is happening in today's Ireland, that children are being sold short in such a way.

It is not just mental health services for children, because a record-breaking 46 children are reportedly waiting on trolleys in hospitals today. That is not how children should be cared for in a republic, with persistent failures of clinical oversight and delivery of services to children in need of mental and physical health services.

The Taoiseach committed to setting up a unit on child poverty in his Department, as part of his nomination speech in December, but will he commit to ensuring children will receive the necessary health services that are clearly not currently available?

Will the Government outline the parameters of the clinical review being conducted by the HSE into all open cases in each CAMHS team so we can see the true extent of failures for children? Will the Government ensure, as a priority, the immediate regulation of CAMHS under the Mental Health Act 2001? We need to see that legislation progressed. On "Morning Ireland" earlier, the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, was somewhat evasive in his response to the question on legislation, yet we know that gaps in the Mental Health Act have left Ireland significantly out of line with international human rights standards regarding mental health services for children. There was a review ten years ago stating that we need to see all parts of existing legislation relating to children's mental health put into one stand-alone Bill. We need to see proper statutory regulation of this service.

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