Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 14 July 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Non-Covid Healthcare Disruption: Mental Health Services (Resumed)

Photo of David CullinaneDavid Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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Okay. The report goes on to cite critical risks in several areas, including premises, therapeutic programmes, services and staffing, as well as a lack of individual plans for patients in these settings. I wish to talk Mr. Ryan through some of the figures in the report because they are quite stark. The figures are broken down for each hospital and acute centre. The centres are licensed and have conditions attaching to them, as Mr. Ryan is aware. I refer to the psychiatric unit in Waterford. Its compliance rate was 77% in 2017, 73% in 2018 and 67% in 2019. That is going in the wrong direction. The same is true in several other areas. I will move to the compliance figures broken down by area. The compliance figure for premises was 31% and that for individual care plans was 52%. It was 57% in 2018. Compliance with rules on electroconvulsive therapy was 45%, down from 58%. The level of compliance with rules on seclusion was 21%, down from 33%. Compliance with regard to the admission of children was 7%, down from 11%.

How can Mr. Ryan, as one of the people with responsibility for this area, stand over situations in which the independent regulator is stating that residents are being treated as second-class citizens, that their fundamental human rights are being breached and that many of the residents are being treated in places where there are compliance issues in the context of cleanliness, a lack of individual care plans and other difficulties? How can he, as a person who is responsible for making sure that those actions are delivered, stand over the report to which I refer and the figures it contains?