Sir Jim Ratcliffe has committed the modern British sin of saying out loud what many notice but few will admit. He looked at the numbers, the pressure on public services, rising welfare dependency, and rapid demographic change, and concluded that something is very wrong. Britain, he argues, has been âcolonised by immigrantsâ. The population has surged to about 70 million despite declining birth rates. Sir Jim is right. Only the wilfully blind would claim Britain today resembles the country of the early 2000s, let alone the Britain of the 80s and 90s.
Ratcliffeâs warning echoes comments made years ago by John Cleese, who observed that London was ânot really an English city anymoreâ. The response was as pathetic as it was predictable. Dismiss the speaker, ignore the substance; insert an ad hominem in place of an argument.
But walk through parts of the capital today, and the sensation isnât one of cosmopolitan vibrancy. If anything, itâs one of dislocation. Shop signs change languages every few meters. Entire neighborhoods feel detached from the civic rhythms that once defined the city. Diversity, weâre assured, is enriching. But discontinuity breeds destabilization, and Britain is feeling its effects.
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The controversy surrounding Ratcliffeâs words rests on a deliberate conflation. Any criticism of immigration levels is recast as hostility toward immigrants themselves. That sleight of hand ends serious discussion. The issue is not whether newcomers contribute â some do, and do so admirably â but whether policy has prioritised scale over skill, speed over integration, and short-term labour fixes over long-term cohesion.When low-wage dependency expands while productivity stagnates, the social contract begins to fray. A welfare state built for balance canât absorb perpetual imbalance.
Britainâs postwar immigration story contains success chapters worth celebrating. Doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, and innovators have strengthened the nation. But the present debate concerns a different pattern: an influx weighted toward low-skilled labour entering an economy already struggling with housing shortages, stagnant wages, and overburdened public infrastructure. When supply outpaces absorption, pressure builds. Classrooms crowd. Surgeries overflow. Housing lists lengthen. The system strains, and strain breeds resentment.
As a chemical engineer-turned-industrial titan, Sir Jim understands how systems fail when inputs exceed their limits. You cannot add millions more variables to a closed vessel and expect stable pressure.
Dark humour may be the only way to cope with the absurdities. In parts of Britain, you can wait years for a council house, but a chicken tikka arrives before youâve found the remote. The trains run late, potholes reproduce like rabbits, and the Home Office loses paperwork with the flair of a Vegas magician. Yet citizens are told all is well, while prices rise and fear of violent crime shadows ordinary life.
Ratcliffe is no sainted football saviour. His tenure at Manchester United has been turbulent, unpopular, and, at times, clumsy. Yet even critics concede he is an intelligent man willing to make unpopular decisions when he believes they are necessary. That trait, rare in an age of focus-group governance, is precisely what Britain lacks. Leadership now often resembles risk avoidance dressed as compassion. Difficult decisions are deferred. Problems compound. The bill arrives later, larger, and less negotiable.
To raise these concerns today is to risk social excommunication. The charge of âracistâ is applied with mechanical speed. Yet a nation canât navigate rapid demographic change while forbidding debate about its consequences. Democracies rely on candour. When candour disappears, distrust fills the vacuum. If immigration rises alongside increases in serious crime, including rape, the public deserves an honest, evidence-based discussion rather than reflexive dismissal.
As I write this, I see that Sir Jim has apologised for any offence his words caused. That is a shame. There was no need to retreat. If anything, he didnât go far enough. A population jump of roughly 12 million in a few short years, driven largely by immigration, doesnât require a demographer to understand its implications. At the same time, fewer British-born families are having children, while many young, skilled people choose to leave. Numbers reshape nations. New cultures enter the mix, enriching in some ways and challenging in others. Although cultural change is inevitable, a stable society depends on integration and the firm application of common laws, especially in safeguarding women and prosecuting dangerous criminals.
If the share of people born and raised in Britain continues to shrink while outward migration rises, the countryâs character will inevitably shift. A society can evolve and endure, but it cannot transform beyond recognition and remain the same.
A family in Kerry talking to a consultant psychiatrist in Doha will not solve Camhs crisis
One year after the Maskey Report, its core recommendation that trust in the service must be restored appears to have been abandoned
In Kerry south, initial Camhs assessments of children who may have waited up to two years on a waiting list, are now conducted by telehealth services, with the consultant psychiatrist joining the session from Doha.
THU, 19 JAN, 2023 – 02:00
JOAN CRONIN
Last January, Dr Sean Maskey found hundreds of children who had attended the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (Camhs) in South Kerry had received substandard care, with significant harm caused to 46 children due to the inappropriate prescription of medication.Â
The treatment of 227 children attending South Kerry Camhs was considered risky. Following publication of the Maskey Report, the Children’s Rights Alliance said: âThis is one of the most damning reports published on mental health services for children.Â
“It demonstrates failures at all levels: clinical failure, management failure, oversight failure and administrative failure.Â
“Itâs deeply disturbing that young children were subjected to psychotropic medication â for normal emotional responses â leading to devastating consequences. Children will have lost years of their life because of this treatment.âÂ
Article 24 of the Human Rights Convention is clear. âEvery child has the right to enjoy the highest possible standard of health, to access health and other related services and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health.âÂ
Article 42A of the Irish Constitution affirms children’s natural and imprescriptible rights and the State’s duty to uphold these rights. Children have the right for their best interests to be of paramount consideration where the State seeks to intervene to protect their safety and welfare.
The failure of Kerry Camhs to deliver a safe mental health service was not just a scandal of one unsupervised junior doctor but a scandal of repeated and continuing political failure.Â
It was an issue local to Kerry but the harming of large numbers of vulnerable young people by State failure was and is a national issue.
One year after the Maskey Report, Kerry Camhs remains in crisis, and one could reasonably ask: where is the leadership to change this?
The Maskey Report
Dr Sean Maskeyâs report was forensic. He noted there was an absence of a consultant clinical lead for Team A, Kerry Camhs. This absence had contributed to the failure to deliver and sustain a high-quality service.Â
Dr Maskey was clear the service had not implemented many of the recommendations of the Camhs Standard Operating Procedure 2015 or the subsequent Camhs Operational Guidelines in 2019.
Dr Maskey recalled that in July 2018, the whole Camhs team wrote to senior management in the HSE detailing multiple concerns about waiting lists, access to training and development for staff, a fragmented autism diagnosis pathway in Kerry Area A, and limited community resources that would otherwise take cases referred to Camhs.
They raised the issue of safety for the patients, through inadequate clinical resources and training, waiting lists, and access to inpatient beds.
The absence of a clinical lead, the consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, was a long-standing concern for the group. Dr Maskey, in his evaluation of this concern, noted one of the key contributory factors that led to the harm caused to children was âthe absence of a consultant in Team A, as this absence meant there was no regular, effective oversight of junior doctorsâ work through formal supervision and frequent joint working with a senior doctorâ.
Dr Maskey referred to Vision for Change, where the consultant is the clinical lead as defined by legislation. The absence of a clinical lead means there is no one, in the words of Vision for Change, to âarticulate the collective vision of the team and ensure clinical probityâ.
Recommendations for change
Dr Maskey points out that: âRebuilding trust must be a primary focus of the service in considering how to take forward these recommendations. The childrenâs’ and the parentsâ voices have been quiet in this review.
“If the service is to rebuild their trust, children and their families must be involved in the process, rather than experience it as something being done by âtheyâ.Â
He went on to say the HSE had a lot of work to do to create the conditions that would attract a consultant in South Kerry.Â
Parents, young people, and community services reading these words from Dr Maskey may have breathed a collective sigh of relief and possibly experienced hope the Government and HSE would try and follow through on the recommendations.
If the main recommendation was to rebuild trust with the employment of a clinical lead as in a consultant psychiatrist in Kerry Camhs Team A, a reasonable expectation would be that every measure would be put in place to source an experienced Camhs consultant who would be supported to work with families, other clinicians in Camhs, community services, GPs, and hospitals.Â
A real urgency was to turn the service around from one which harms children to become one that children and families might trust to âdo no harmâ.
What happened next
Accepting the real and difficult challenge of finding a consultant to lead and rebuild trust in the damaged Kerry service, what measures were put in place for an internal transfer of a consultant to take on the task?
What measures did the Government take to support the HSE to enable an experienced consultant psychiatrist to take a post in Kerry?
Were there any incentives offered for a transfer to Kerry from one of the well-resourced in psychiatry CHO areas?
There are many retired Camhs consultant psychiatrists who engage in private practice in Ireland and England. Were any of these doctors approached about the possibility of leading the Kerry team in its time of crisis?Â
We donât know. The HSE retreated to its old veil of secrecy. The silence from the Government was deafening. Having seen what was done during the Covid pandemic, I do not believe it is beyond the ability of the Government to create the conditions for the employment of a consultant psychiatrist on an emergency basis to turn Kerry Camhs around.
What did emerge is that in Kerry south, initial Camhs assessments of children who may have waited up to two years on a waiting list, are now conducted by telehealth services, with the consultant psychiatrist joining the session from Doha.Â
“This means the first meeting that the child and family have with the Camhs consultant psychiatrist is online, with the family in Kerry and the consultant in Doha.”
This assessment meeting is crucially important as it is the first point of contact with the clinical lead. This meeting can be a very anxious time for children and years of experience has taught me that particularly young children and teenagers are often understandably anxious and suspicious of the professionals in the room.
Establishing therapeutic links and forming relationships at that first meeting is important. Sitting together with the weight of a problem for a child and family is an often daunting and challenging piece of work for clinicians, carers, and children but it is often the âsitting together with the problemâ that allows it to become manageable. Doing this successfully from Doha is impossible.
One of the aims of an initial Camhs assessment is to gather background information to try and understand what has been going on in the child or adolescentâs life.Â
An initial assessment also seeks to ensure Camhs is the right service for the child or adolescent and that they and their parent(s)/carers are happy to attend the service.
The initial assessment will cover a range of areas including personal information, social history, family history, education, physical health, lifestyle factors, risk assessments, strengths and protective factors and the views of the child or adolescent and their parent(s) on the current situation.Â
Parents and children are asked to share deeply personal information and often this is the place where family tensions are highlighted.Â
Clinicians in the room are trained to listen for the âunsaidâ and to observe family power dynamics. Well-trained clinicians are sensitive to who might try controlling the session.
“Because of the complexity of family life and the complexities inherent in the developmental mental health of children it is impossible to offer a quality Camhs assessment online.
Telehealth assessments in Camhs is not good practice. Research in the UK has found telemedicine poses risks to children and young peopleâs safety, for example staff missing cues or issues that would have been picked up face-to-face, as well as failure to assess unseen risks within the home environment.Â
HSE Camhs Operational Guidelines 2019 says âchildren and adolescents should be empowered to participate meaningfully in the design, implementation, delivery, and evaluation of mental health servicesâÂ
Previously, children in Kerry Camhs have spoken of the lack of consultation with them around their assessment and treatment. Were they consulted about the use of telehealth as part of their Camhs assessment?
This poor assessment practice is currently taking place against a background of continuing failure at all levels. The core recommendation of the Maskey Report that trust must be restored appears to be abandoned.
The children and families in Kerry who need to access Camhs have suffered enough. Their past and present treatment does not meet the requirements of Article 24 of the Human Rights Convention or any other reasonable measure. “
The clinicians, as in the psychologists, social workers, nurses, occupational therapists, and administrative staff who have stayed working in Kerry Camhs despite its poor reputation and no leadership or psychiatry support, need to be acknowledged for their work and supported with clinical leadership that is in the room, and not halfway across the world in Doha.
This can only come about with strong political leadership at Government level. Why would any experienced consultant put themselves in the disaster that is Kerry Camhs, if they were not confident the Government was serious about having this situation addressed.
The ongoing potentially dangerous situation in Kerry Camhs would indicate the Government is more concerned with cosmetic rather than real change.
Joan Cronin lectures in social work at the School of Applied Social Studies in University College Cork
đşđ¸đŽđˇ This is America's biggest Middle East buildup since the Iraq invasion, and the hardware list reads like someone handed the Pentagon a blank check and said âgo nuts.â
A victim of the Kerry mental health services scandal has written to the Taoiseach demanding a State apology to those who were harmed.
Davin Godfrey, 21, who received an apology from the HSE for the care he received in the North Kerry Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), is seeking a meeting with Leo Varadkar to discuss how the State is handling the scandal.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
The Listowel man was treated with six medications at one time, including antipsychotic drugs when he was a CAMHS patient.
Davin Godfrey, 21, who received an apology from the HSE for the care he received in the North Kerry Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), is seeking a meeting with Leo Varadkar to discuss how the State is handling the scandal.
Mr Godfrey, who has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), was referred to CAMHS with social anxiety when he was a child, but became morbidly obese and developed breasts while on the medications prescribed by his CAMHS clinician.
He had to undergo surgery to remove the breast tissue and is still dealing with the physical and mental consequences of his treatment. Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, Mr Godfrey said: âThey gave out pills like they were Smarties.â
He said the medication he was given had âseverely made a hames of the chemical balance in the brainâ.
âUndoubtedly, CAMHS made things a lot worse. If I had just been treated initially with talk therapy, address issues in school, recognise my primary diagnosis is ASD and manage it,â he added.
Now, the campaigner has called on the Taoiseach to meet him, and wants him to provide a State apology to all young people who were harmed in the care of the CAMHS service.
âLeo Varadkar apologised for the Cervical Check scandal. That was a healthcare scandal that blew the lid on treatment in the HSE, this is the same too. I think itâs very much worthy of a State apology,â Mr Godfrey said.
He has also criticised the HSE for limiting the scope of a review of the North Kerry service, as his case, and others who were in the service prior to November 2022, are not included.
A separate external review of his case took place and he received an apology from HSE chief Bernard Gloster, in which Mr Gloster said: âYou were failed and that failure caused you harm.â
Mr Godfrey has had to lodge a case in the High Court seeking compensation for the harm caused to him in the service, as only those within the South Kerry CAMH service have access to a dedicated redress scheme.
In his letter to the Taoiseach, he wrote: âBizarrely, the redress scheme is only open to applications for those affected in South Kerry during the course of theMaskey Review. Therefore, potentially hundreds of young people in the region are being left to seek recourse in the High Court, leaving very sensitive information in the public domain.â
In 2022 a report by Dr SeĂĄn Maskey found that 46 service users in South Kerry CAMHS suffered âsignificant harmâ and 227 service users were âexposed to the risk of significant harmâ in their treatment by a junior doctor in the service. Dr Maskeyâs six-month-long review looked at 1,300 case files, however only 300 files are being considered in a separate review into the North Kerry service by Dr Collette Halpin.
âConsidering the gravity of the problem that exists in North Kerry, it is going to take 13 months for the HSE to review 300 files.
âItâs truly shameful,â Mr Godfrey said.
The North Kerry review is expected to have completed its first phase next month, however Mr Godfrey said: âI wonât hold my breath for it to be completed on time.â
In his letter to the Taoiseach, Mr Godfrey also hit out at the Mental Health Commissionâs recent review into CAMHS nationwide, which found significant issues with staffing and access to care in the services.
However, only 10% of case files were audited.
Mr Godfrey said that the findings were âshockingâ but the review did not address whether the prescription of antipsychotic drugs were appropriate â a key factor of the lapses in care in Kerry services.
âOn the back of the extremely concerning findings regarding the monitoring of antipsychotics, they chose not to mention if the medication was prescribed appropriately or not. They must have forgot, eh? Pity!â
The Taoiseach has previously said that the Government are âinvesting very significantly in mental health servicesâ.
âIt is needed because of the very high level of demand,â he said.
CAMHS receives about âŹ137million in funding annually.
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Recent studies in neuroscience and psychology are reframing ADHD not merely as a set of cognitive hurdles but as a powerful driver of breakthrough creativity and innovation.
Long stereotyped for difficulties with focus, attention, and impulse control, individuals with ADHD traits often exhibit superior divergent thinkingâthe capacity to generate a wide array of novel ideas by connecting distant or unrelated concepts. This stems from reduced adherence to rigid mental frameworks, enabling freer conceptual expansion and the production of more original, unconventional solutions than neurotypical counterparts.
Heightened mind-wandering, especially when deliberate (purposefully allowing thoughts to drift), acts as a fertile source for this creativity, bypassing conventional boundaries to yield abundant “outside-the-box” insights. Complementing this cognitive flexibility is a neurological drive for novelty rooted in lower baseline dopamine signaling. This creates a chronic need for stimulation, translating into exploratory, risk-tolerant behavior and a propensity for adventureâqualities that can disrupt routine settings but prove invaluable in dynamic fields. Impulsivity, often reframed as rapid action initiation, becomes a catalyst for pursuing bold ideas and seizing opportunities in high-stakes environments. These traits align closely with the profiles of many successful entrepreneurs, inventors, and pioneers. In fast-evolving creative and innovative economies, the ADHD brain’s wiring for quick associative leaps, tolerance of uncertainty, and motivation through novelty-seeking provides a distinct edge, turning potential challenges into engines of originality and progress. Emerging evidence from 2025â2026 research reinforces this view: studies link stronger ADHD traits to elevated creative achievements via mediated mind-wandering, intuitive insight-driven problem-solving, and higher real-world inventive output, highlighting neurodiversity’s role in fueling societal advancement. [Maisano, H., et al. (2026). ADHD Symptoms Predict Distinct Creative Problem-Solving Styles and Superior Solving Ability. Personality and Individual Differences (February 2026)]
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