Mental Health Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-11
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Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

I thank Deputy Cahill and I acknowledge the work he has done regarding the situation with CAMHS services in Kerry when he was a councillor and when he met me as well as the advocacy work he did with the families and the parents. I am happy to be here this morning to take his question and I will answer as best I can.
As the Deputy will be aware, as Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, I was in this role when the Maskey report was published in 2022. The report examined deficits relating to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, CAMHS, in south Kerry. The Maskey report examined the files of everyone who received care from south Kerry CAMHS between 1 July 2016 and 19 April 2021. It identified that 240 young people did not receive the standard of care they should have had from CAMHS.
At the time, the HSE issued an apology, offered open disclosure meetings to the cohort identified as having suffered potential harm or injury or risk of harm or injury in south Kerry, and instigated a series of follow-up actions and changes. The Deputy will remember that at the time I, as Minister of State, commissioned a national audit from the HSE in relation to every single CAMHS team in Ireland. I also asked the Mental Health Commission to carry out a national review. These were all concluded and the CAMHS teams outside of Kerry, in the review and in the audit, did not see the same challenges regarding the overprescribing we saw in Kerry.
The Government acknowledged these deficits at the time and, as the Deputy said, I worked closely with my Government colleagues, including the Attorney General, to introduce a non-adversarial route for children and their families to seek compensation for the shortfall in care received. Following on from this, and the challenges we have seen in Kerry, I established the first ever national child and youth mental health office in the HSE to drive reform of CAMHS. I appointed a national clinical lead for child and youth mental health services for the first time and directed a national prescribing audit. I subsequently published the child and youth mental health action plan last year, which details 17 areas for service improvement. Implementation of the action plan is under way, and I monitor progress very closely.
This also resulted in the development and delivery of the Kerry CAMHS compensation scheme, which is managed and administered by the State Claims Agency on behalf of the HSE. As of 12 January 2026, four weeks ago, the State Claims Agency received 231 applications to the south Kerry CAMHS compensation scheme. As we know, there were 240 cases. Payments on account had been made to 227 applicants following an application verification process. Mediations were also ongoing, and 120 of these had taken place up to 12 January, resulting in 111 settlements, four cases for determination by the mediator and five adjourned for further investigations.
I understand there is one lead firm of solicitors representing most of the remaining applicants to the scheme. Subject to the solicitors' capacity to progress their caseload, the State Claims Agency aims to finalise the remaining cases in the next 18 months. The State Claims Agency continues to engage with the processes involved in the compensation scheme. As the Deputy will appreciate, I do not have access to a list of settlement amounts paid out by the State Claims Agency, and I will speak to north Kerry when I come back in.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-11