Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Last year, the Data Protection Commission published a report on an investigation it had launched into the Department of Health keeping dossiers on families who were taking cases against the State over the provision of services to their children with disabilities. There was an outcome to the report, which resulted from a whistleblower’s actions two years earlier. The Department was fined and told that it should not be keeping dossiers, as doing so was excessive and wrong and it was an unlawful gathering of data on families to besmirch them in legal cases where they were justifiably making claims against the State for services that were owed to their children.

I have very strong reason to believe that the Department and staff within the HSE are still doing that, and that if people caring for family members with disabilities raise their heads above the parapet, the might of the HSE will come down to cover its own back over the abject failure over a long period to deliver services to people.

I have previously called for statements in the House on the delivery of services. Where are we with that delivery? We have held a couple of sessions of statements and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, is good, but we need the HSE to be accountable. When we sought statements on who was accountable for the HSE’s failure to deliver these services, we encountered an issue, as the HSE is under the Department of Health, but also under the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

At the heart of my comments is a woman whose 22-year-old son lives with her. They transferred from CHO 9 to CHO 7. Since then, he has received no day care services. He gets respite care every fortnight. Recently, he was brought in for respite for four weeks. During that time, he was in four different centres and received no day services.Since he has been home, his mother has been under scrutiny by the HSE and a rather defamatory report has been published about her because she rang up and asked that someone do their job and produce the package of services to follow her son from CHO 9 to CHO 7 that is still not being delivered. We need accountability. There is no accountability to these families. They are just cut adrift. We need statements on this matter in the House and the Minister for Health to come in, because the buck is being passed between the Department of Health and the Department of children on this. We need it to be addressed as a matter of urgency.