Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I concur with everything that Deputy Doherty said in her contribution. I think, if this has not been already said, there is an absolute systems failure in the HSE to protect the most vulnerable people under its care. No matter how many summits take place or improvements are made, the glaring fact is that the HSE has failed to protect those in residential care at present.

It is a fact that HIQA has received information from 930 individual whistleblowers who have made complaints about HSE institutions and also private nursing homes. I do not know how many of the nursing homes are HSE run or homes for people with disabilities. Does the HSE know or has it tried to find out how many of these complaints refer to institutions under its control? What contact have the witnesses had with the 160 individual complaints about homes for people with disability or residential services? How many of the 27 fully redacted complaints - and we cannot even get the date - involved HSE institutions?

In my view the HSE is not doing its job and there is a total failure of care. HIQA was established in 2013 and the complaints go back to that date. Deputy Conway asked HIQA at a committee meeting on 5 June 2014 what needed to change for it to deal with the unsolicited information it was receiving. In response, the HIQA representative referred to gaps in the legislation and said "The legislation needs to be comprehensive." Today the HSE representative said that HIQA was not seeking anything. That is not what Mr. Phelim Quinn said on the record.