Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. O'Brien for his opening remarks.

Here we are again on foot of a "Prime Time" investigation programme. Nobody who watched the programme the other night did not draw parallels between what we saw carried out in Áras Attracta and what we saw in the child care setting. The similarity is that those in receipt of the service are non-verbal, exposed to danger and vulnerable. We as a society must do much better than we are doing for those vulnerable groups.

What concerned me most is when we saw the person who was a management position go in and physically sit on a woman who has brittle bones, and that the staff stood by and thought this was fun.

The woman's name was Ivy and she was humiliated further by being asked to apologise to staff and people thought that was acceptable.

What concerns me is that all the HIQA reports in the world are not going to root out that kind of behaviour. We need a focus on the kind of people and relationships they have with the people they are looking after. We have to turn this whole thing on its head in terms of how we are operating services. First, the camera was there for however many weeks, but the only time I saw the manager - granted in the excerpts I saw - come into the building was when he came in to sit on that woman. Who was in there looking to see what quality of service was being provided? We saw some very tender moments. One saw a care staff member putting some lipstick on a person and brushing her hair. Those are the kinds of things people who are carers and nursing staff should do. They are the kinds of things we would do for our children or vulnerable aunts, uncles, brothers or sisters as if it is their home.