Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On the annual report, I am impressed by the section relating to numbers, inspections of health and social care settings and so on. There were 34,622 completions of human rights-based approach modules and 13,774 completions of an online learning course on adult safeguarding. It gives a sense of the amount of work that is done. I am conscious that when we hear about HIQA, we are usually hearing of terrible things that are happening right in the system itself. It is helpful for us that we are looking at how the system is actually being used and the impact it is having on patients.

In the section on infections, again, we are given the amount of protection against infection and so on. For a long time, particularly within the health system and in hospitals but not exclusively so, there were outbreaks of diseases like MRSA and so on. There has also been criticism in recent times in respect of the amount of sepsis and the take-up in respect of that. We had a group in last week who referred to a 75% reinfection rate in respect of services. Some of that was put down to the length of time patients were waiting on access to services, but not exclusively so. Some of it was down to sterilisation and other issues as well. On the challenges around that, as part of HIQA's inspection process, does it highlight trends in respect of particular diseases and so on?

One of the things that struck me as a layperson was the use of copper to prevent the spread of infection. We do not seem to use those materials to a great extent. I asked our guests from the national children's hospital what materials are being used for door handles, some of which involve pressing a button and others are elbow operated. In its role in respect of standards, does HIQA make recommendations in this regard? Particularly in respect of learning from the past and materials we should be using, has it ever made a recommendation on that whole area?