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

I will move on to the safety and quality committee of the HSE board, which met in February 2023 to discuss the Owenacurra closure. This is more about those residents who were in Owenacurra. The minutes of that meeting stated: "Some members of the Committee expressed dissatisfaction with the need to transfer the residents away from the Midleton area contrary to their expressed wishes." That is what the Chair brought up. The minutes also stated:

The Committee raised concerns regarding placements to St. Stephen’s Hospital, Glanmire and St. Catherine’s Ward in St. Finbarr’s Hospital, Cork as these centres had received lower Mental Health Commission inspection compliance ratings than the Owenacurra Centre. Concerns were expressed that these environments are congregated settings that are campus based, isolated, away from the community in contravention of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Government policy and HSE policy as set out in Time to Move on from Congregated Settings - A Strategy for Community Inclusion.

We know that the two Owenacurra residents were transferred to long-stay wards in St. Stephen's hospital where they were sharing rooms at least initially. One resident was transferred to St. Catherine's ward where they were also sharing a room. Those arrangements may have changed since, and Ms O'Donovan cannot talk about individual cases, but the trend can be seen where we are being told in these sessions that the patient is at the centre of the decision-making and we are moving towards this new policy.

However, in practice, when following the thread of what actually happened to people when essentially an estates capital budget decision around a building was made, that falls down. One of the wards in St. Stephen’s, unit 3, was among the most strongly criticised of any inspection report by the Mental Health Commission that I have ever seen, and I have read a lot of inspection reports over the past year. How are we justifying moving people from Owenacurra, which absolutely was a building in need of significant work, into severely congregated settings away from families and communities? How did we make a differentiation between the people who were moved to that situation or to nursing homes and the six people who remain in Owenacurra? Can somebody explain that to me? I am not asking about individual cases rather I am asking about the decision hierarchy. Who was making that decision?