Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I want to address this issue as I am also a member of the Joint Committee on Health and I will bring our committee here up to speed now on it. The health committee looked at this issue in respect of the health impacts for those people, it met the HSE and, to be honest, got very little good out of that body on this. This issue has now been referred to the HSE board for independent overview in respect of the impacts as they relate to health.

In the process of doing the work on Owenacurra, the committee has gathered into the discussion a significant amount of additional material around building and capital spending in the Cork area, when it comes to mental health facilities. We are talking in the region of seven buildings now. A piece of work has been done since this time last year around this issue, because it was announced in June or July. There have been many freedom of information, FOI, requests and almost no information has been received through those FOI requests.

This has gone beyond Owenacurra. I understand the frustration of the individual families. I have met some of them. Their frustration and fear are very real. To keep it on money issues relevant to the committee, there seems to be a nest of questions on the decision-making process on capital spending in this area. It has proved to be almost impossible to get answers to questions on why certain spending decisions were made. It looks as though it will end up spending a much larger amount going about it the way it has and it will do a huge amount of damage to patients. I have yet to see a good explanation of why it has happened. For argument's sake we could probably pick a few other CHOs around the country on which we could do this type of review of decision-making on spending and capital costs. The CHO in Cork is the one on which I have the most information and where I have the most questions. We are not speaking anymore about one building in Owenacurra and the distress of one set of families. We are now speaking about a web of very strange decision-making when it comes to capital spending. I put it to the committee that this is exactly the type of thing the committee should be doing.