The HSE consultant who exposed the Kerry CAMHS scandal has revealed emergency referrals involving suicidal children were routinely ignored in other areas, describing the neglect as ‘systemic homicide’.

In an exclusive interview with the Irish Mail on Sunday, Dr Maya Sharma, who is now homeless in London, said her biggest regret is that she did not raise red flags about systemic governance failures and inappropriate prescribing practices earlier.

Dr Sharma has been credited with saving children’s lives by exposing horrific practices at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) in Kerry.

Her whistleblowing has since been vindicated in two HSE reports, the Maskey and Halpin Reviews, and has been widely commended.

These reports found hundreds of children in Kerry had been put in danger by dangerous practices, including the inappropriate prescription of cocktails of heavy anti-psychotic medication and a lack of consultant-led care.

But this week Dr Sharma revealed for the first time that she witnessed similar dysfunction while working in Cork CAMHS services before transferring to Kerry.

‘This is something I have not spoken about before. I worked in three Cork teams and I should have whistle-blown there. I kick myself for not having done that.

‘The guilt I have is about why I didn’t do it for Cork, but I just got down to work there and then it was all hands on deck,’ she said.

The psychiatrist stressed that she does not place any blame on the teams she worked with in Cork.

‘They were good teams and very dedicated professionals without exception,’ she said.

Instead, Dr Sharma said a wider dysfunction – an inability to attract consultants and a lack of clinical governance across the system – led to children who could have been saved taking their own lives.

According to Dr Sharma, the way children and young people in need of mental health interventions were let down amounts to ‘systemic homicide’.

Dr Sharma said she spotted problems straight away when she began working in Cork in March 2020.

‘In my first week, I walked through the administration office just to familiarise myself and I found folders marked with years going back up to 2016,’ she said.

‘There was one that was marked priority. I picked that up and it had 12 referrals, from 2016 onwards, that were made by A&E.’

These cases involved children and adolescents in mental distress who had presented with life-threatening crises at emergency departments in Cork and been referred for specialist CAMHS help.

Other files contained referrals from GPs dating back half a decade.

But from reading the files, Dr Sharma could see they had been ignored for years.

‘Children and young people in crisis had presented to A&E and there was no follow-up,’ she said. Instead of help, each file contained the same formulaic letter.

According to Dr Sharma, the letters said: ‘We currently do not have a psychiatrist in the team, a consultant psychiatrist or any, actually, and therefore we are going to put your referral on hold.’

Dr Sharma said it was incomprehensible that referrals would be treated like this.

‘We have accepted it [the referral] but we are not going to be doing anything. I mean, it was so bizarre for me.’

Dr Sharma was speaking after it emerged this week that she is now living in homeless accommodation in London after she was unable to find employment as a result of her whistleblowing in Ireland.

‘My forehead is tattooed with risk of reputational damage to organisations,’ Dr Sharma said.

In 2023, Dr Sharma – who was known as Ankur Sharma prior to gender-transitioning – settled a lawsuit against the HSE for €75,000.

The case alleged she had been bullied and mistreated because of her decision to lift the lid on dysfunctional prescribing practices in Kerry.

Dr Sharma then returned to India and began to apply for jobs in the UK health service.

But according to Dr Sharma, her reputation as a whistleblower has made it impossible to find work in any publicly funded service.

For example, one job with an NHS trust was lost after a negative reference from the HSE resulted in Dr Sharma being let go before her initiation period had concluded.

‘Suddenly there’s an email from the head of HR, which is two lines saying the Trust has decided to withdraw your conditional offer of employment due to unsatisfactory references.

‘It was a punch in my gut,’ Dr Sharma told the MoS. ‘I refer to it as a thunderous, cosmic slap. It deafened me, and it just numbed me completely in that moment.’

At one point during the winter, Dr Sharma revealed she had to sleep for several days at Heathrow Airport, telling staff she had missed her flight.

While living rough in London, Dr Sharma was also brutally assaulted in a random attack that left her hospitalised with severe injuries.

Now, with her savings exhausted, she has been seeking to be re-registered with the Irish Medical Council (IMC) and hopes to return to Kerry to open a private practice for children and young people that will charge people on a sliding scale based on family income.

She began the process of re-registration in February 2024 but, due to circumstances beyond her control, the application remains unresolved. Her reinstatement is due to be considered by an IMC adjudication panel on Tuesday.

According to Dr Sharma, previous adjudication hearings have not gone ahead because there were not enough members present for a quorum.

Last night, the junior minister with responsibility for mental health, Mary Butler, paid tribute to Dr Sharma for her role in bringing prescribing and diagnostic concerns in Kerry to light.

‘I am very grateful to Dr Sharma for their service and for coming forward with their concerns,’ Ms Butler said.

‘They have made a profound difference to the quality of mental health services for children in Kerry, which are now vastly improved and the best-staffed in the country.’

The Waterford TD and Government Chief Whip added: ‘I am confident the recent changes made by the HSE, including the establishment of a new National Office for Protected Disclosures, will provide more structured support to whistleblowers and ensure whistleblowers can report issues confidentially.’

The HSE said it is ‘committed to protecting workers from penalisation or a threat of penalisation because the worker made a protected disclosure’.