Child and Family Agency
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-19
============================================================

Norma Foley (FF), Kerry

The Deputy attended the briefing with me provided by the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, on the north Kerry CAMHS report. He will appreciate that it is not in my remit; it is within the remit of Deputy Butler. It is my understanding that she will make further announcements as regards the extension of the look-back and issues around compensation. The Deputy will respect that it is appropriate that she as the line Minister of State does that.
On the points raised by Deputy Kerrane, there are so many complexities in this instance. As I previously referenced with Deputy Ó Murchú, there is one instance where 14 staff are required for the care of one child. It is right that we provide those 14 staff but in normal instances that is two beds being required, such are the complexities. There have been significant improvements, such as the new pay grade with a 20% increase. It has yielded 27 additional people being recruited. Significant recruitment is taking place abroad in South Africa and the Philippines which is also garnering success. The work continues.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-19