• Findings of report are ‘devastating’ for patients and their families
   
• ‘The system is set up to fail as geographically isolated community-based services have always had difficulties with staff recruitment and retention which leads to poor outcomes for patients’

 

Wednesday February 18, 2026. The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has welcomed the publication of an independent report into north Kerry Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), saying that the findings were extremely concerning and a direct consequence of poor governance, structural deficits and under-resourcing of mental health services.

Prof Matthew Sadlier, Vice-President of the IMO and Chair of its Consultants’ Committee, who is also a consultant psychiatrist, said that mere apologies to the victims and their families were not sufficient, and that root and branch reform of the services were needed as an urgent priority. “The findings of this CAMHS report are devastating for the many children and adolescents who accessed services in north Kerry and their families.

“At the heart of this issue are poor governance and under-resourcing of mental health services – none of the teams in north Kerry was staffed at appropriate levels, denying patients the high-quality standard of care they needed. The system is set up to fail as geographically isolated community-based services have always had difficulties with staff recruitment and retention which leads to poor outcomes for patients.”

He added that the current governance structure generally works when every team is adequately staffed and working, but that it immediately falls apart when staff members are absent. “Not having co-located teams results in junior staff members having geographically distant supervisors which is a recipe for disaster,” he said.

Prof Sadlier added that this problem is exacerbated by our outdated record systems and that a modern functioning electronic patient record system would have been able to pick up “prescribing differences between areas and allow for mitigation before the issue got out of hand”.

He said that mental health services should adopt the approach of cancer services two decades ago. “Before cancer services were overhauled, we had multiple sites providing care; however, by creating ‘centres of excellence’ that were fully resourced and staffed, the results improved. Psychiatric services deserve to be organised based upon principles of excellence.”