Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is nobody who can be asked whether it was Mr. X or Mrs. X who issued that response. They cannot follow it up because they do not know who is accountable for issuing that statement, so they do not know who is responsible for dealing with the information and whether that is misinformation or disinformation. As I said earlier, I have heard about cases like this previously. I had a stern conversation with representatives of the HSE during a meeting of this committee relating to the closure of mental health services. What they said, and it reflects what I am seeing again with our guests, was that five or six reports from the Mental Health Commission made recommendations to upgrade the buildings to make them fit for purpose. The HSE maintained that the Mental Health Commission had indicated the building was not fit for purpose. The commission then stated that it had not said that and that it had made recommendations for the HSE, which is the proprietor of the building, to make those repairs and it never did so, and it was the people and the community who suffered.

What makes our guests' case worse is that they have put a lot of public money into it and crap is their thanks. The way they have been treated by the HSE on this matter is contemptible, disgusting, degrading and inhumane, whereby with the stroke of a pen it can make everything disappear, without any accountability or responsibility for what is going to come down the road in a couple of years. Our guests will have nobody to revert to because they do not have a name on the letter. The HSE is still not accountable to anybody. This is an apolitical issue and I can understand how difficult it is even for Government Deputies, because even senior Ministers, of any Government over the years, have found it difficult to deal with top management within the HSE. Some people will have heard me in committee meetings and assumed I am very anti-HSE. I am not, but what maddens me is when there is no accountability or responsibility and when no rationale is given for closing a centre, yet it is still being closed.

I am asking our guests to email me and I will give them questions to ask the HSE to build their case. As I said, it is very difficult to get anything from the HSE. One of its representatives stated, “The current building simply did not allow for the kind of care and recovery that a modern service should provide. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic...” There was no Covid-19 pandemic in east Cork in 2016, 2017, 2018 or 2019. That is what I mean by using excuses. Our guests are being fobbed off. I do not know what the HSE's plan is for the building but I guarantee it will not tell them. I would love to have representatives of the HSE and HIQA appear before the committee, and some of our guests could attend, even if they were only to sit in the Gallery to listen.

This has been happening all over the country. It is starting to get repetitive and yet nobody has been accountable for it. What has been happening will affect everybody, no matter where they are living.