Ms Oonagh Buckley:

We aim to hold clinics on a quarterly basis at which residents can make known any issues they have. The staff have been under pressure in managing that. Our goal is to meet residents every three months to make sure their views are heard. If something arises - there have been a couple of protests and things like that - we tend to send down a staff member that day or the following day to see what the story is and make sure we are on top of whatever has occasioned the issue. We proactively seek the views of residents. We work quite closely with the Office of the Ombudsman. Staff from that office visit every centre every year and listen to the complaints of residents. As the committee will have seen in the Ombudsman's report, many of the complaints tend to be about issues of local communication and can be resolved on the spot.