THE Health Service Executive (HSE) cannot say how many complaints have been made about child mental health services, according to a Cork TD.

The Southern Star recently highlighted the case of a 14-year-old who needed urgent support from the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) but could not secure an appointment due to staffing issues.

Independent Ireland TD Ken O’Flynn said the HSE’s inability to provide basic complaint data on CAMHS represents ‘a serious failure of governance at the heart of the system’.

A Parliamentary Question response confirmed that CAMHS is not separately identifiable within the HSE’s national complaints management system. As a result, the HSE has stated it cannot provide the number of complaints made about CAMHS.

‘This is not acceptable,’ Deputy O’Flynn said. ‘We are dealing with children in distress, families under pressure, and a service that has already been subject to controversy. Yet the HSE cannot even tell the public how many complaints have been made about that service.’

The same response points to ongoing staffing shortfalls across mental health services, with hundreds of posts unfilled and recruitment still lagging behind approved positions.

Deputy O’Flynn said the combination of staffing gaps and the absence of complaint tracking points to a deeper systemic problem.

‘This is how systems fail. You have vacancies on one side and no visibility on complaints on the other. No clear data. No clear accountability. No clear line of sight for the Minister or the public.

‘If complaints are not properly recorded, patterns are missed. If patterns are missed, problems persist. That is not oversight. That is avoidance.’

Deputy O’Flynn called for a dedicated national reporting structure for CAMHS complaints as a matter of urgency.