Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

They are in the public domain. Okay. Deputy Chambers has raised this, but I would also like to ask more about the morale of the staff. How many of the staff are agency workers and how many are core staff based in the building? Are there always nurses on duty on the campus, seven days a week and 24 hours a day? Both the witnesses themselves and HIQA have stated that one of the key findings in the report is the care of the children that present to the facility. This is complex, be it from the point of view of mental health or education. Are there any girls currently on the campus? Have there been any girls since the witnesses last addressed this committee? The witnesses talk about remand as opposed to detention. Something that struck me when I visited Oberstown was that the mixture between children on remand and children in detention was very unsettling when some were leaving. Has the unit now been set up differently? Could the witnesses explain how this has worked in a positive sense? It was very unsettling that children were coming and going all the time.

The issue of GP cover has been raised. Is this a matter of the GP coming in on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning for half an hour, for example, or is there broader access to a GP on campus? I would also like to know what psychological supports are available on campus. In the case where a child presents who poses a risk to his own life then the social care worker, even with the best will in the world, is not a trained psychologist nor is anyone on the management team. I would like to know what level of training is available to support such a child.

Something that worried me in the follow-up to the HIQA report, both in commentary on RTÉ and with regard to the interview, was the fact that it was reported that a child was held for up to nine days in single separation without access to air. I look forward to hearing the witnesses' commentary on this and I need to understand this because that, to me, is not humane. We talk about separation and the like, but what came out in the report was that separation did not seem to be the last resort, though I would like to think that it is. I can understand why separation takes place because of the need for adjusting and this is something that the witnesses have explained very well. I am particularly focusing here, then, on one particular aspect of the report.