Troubled boy engaged with 11 services

Dermot, who took his own life in 2011, was friendly and chatty but found it difficult to talk about his emotions.

When he was 11 gardaí found him with a cable around his neck.

By that point he had already become involved with Child And Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) due to problematic behaviour and missing school.

Aged 15 he was accompanied by gardaí to hospital, having physically threatened his mother and threatening self-harm. His suicidal ideation was linked to alcohol abuse, but following discharge he was readmitted two weeks later following a similar incident, before then going to stay with his grandparents and later returning home.

He came to Garda attention for these and other incidents, was before the courts and allocated a probation officer and child protection social worker. In all he engaged with 11 services, from his school to a specialist multi-disciplinary service for at-risk teens managed by the HSE. His father was not present in his life.

Up to his mid-teens and just six weeks before he died his case was dealt with by a duty social team, before a designated social worker took a more in-depth approach to his case.

After three weeks one of Dermot’s close friends died in an accident. Dermot was very upset and it emerged he had made a suicide attempt. His mother feared for his safety and said a custodial sentence might be the best way to protect him. He failed to fully engage with his two social workers and was following strict bail conditions, but he breached them and was arrested and remanded in custody for four days. The social work department (SWD) only heard of this when one social worker called gardaí regarding a court appearance. He was released on bail three days later and returned home and took his life the next evening.

The review expressed concern that “the frequency of notifications concerning Dermot should ... have elicited a response from the SWD”, with re-referrals not providing in-depth analysis to his problems, adding: “It is of concern that Dermot was referred to the SWD a number of times over a four-year period for essentially the same reasons, without any full assessment having been undertaken of his needs, or of his mother’s capacity to meet them.”

It said “a key factor was the failure to allocate the case until just a few weeks before Dermot died”.