Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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This session is on a different issue but some of the same people are in the room and I want them to revert to the committee with more information. Last week, we extensively considered capital spending in Cork-Kerry CHO and I was assured that the service users who are in 24-hour assisted living at Owenacurra and Garnish House had been fully communicated with regarding the closure of Garnish House and the move out of there. In the meantime, I have been contacted by families who say that is not the case. I am not sure whether that is just a breakdown in communication but I would like to get more information on this. The witnesses do not have to take my word for it; the Irish Examinerthis week published an article on the matter written by Cianan Brennan. Last week, the HSE stated that "staff and clinicians talk directly to service users at Garnish House on a constant basis about their future plans". However, the family of a Garnish House resident stated "The only communication we (my relative and my family) received regarding my relative’s move from Millfield House to Garnish House came on the evening of the move in April 2020 via a short phone call from ... Millfield House". Another communication I received from a family states:

We asked both the Garnish House staff and the clinical team as recently as last week for information. On pointing out that a recent PQ response ... [to a question I tabled] stated that Garnish would be vacated by the HSE in early 2023, the Garnish House staff and clinical team stated that they have not been informed of this. The uncertainty of the past two and a half years has led to a deterioration in our relative’s mental health.

My time is running out and I do not want to use it all on this issue but the clear answer to this issue is to find out exactly what the communication has been.

In the email I received from the chief officer in the CHO he states:

In this context, there is and has been on-going discussion with residents of this high support service, to ensure that they are aware that the service would be moving at some stage, though we would not have a finalised decision on its location. This discussion would be more in the context of keeping service users aware of the temporary nature of the service location rather than in any greater detail and not to detract from their own individual plans of moving forward to a more independent living model suitable to their needs. Once we are clear on the service relocation plan, the clinical team will be engaging with each service user once again in more detail on the specifics.

I am reading this into the record on purpose. The email continues:

The commitment is made that the service will transfer from Garnish House by the end of Q 1 2023. There will be full communication with service users around the details of the service transfer in advance.

I know we discussed the matter last week but these are incredibly vulnerable people. We know that Cork-Kerry CHO's idea of lots of time in advance is, at best, three months, because that is what it did in the context of Owenacurra. These people have been living there for a very long time. I would love for the HSE to come back to me and explain exactly what the communication has been. I do not want to say that what we have been provided with is muddy but there is not a huge amount of detail from the CHO on exactly what the communication with these people was. There should be a log. If a clinician speaks to a family member, he or she makes a note of that, as is best practice. If the families are saying one thing but the HSE is saying another, the way to move forward and get rid of that grey area would be for the HSE to simply set out exactly how it has been informing residents and their families. I acknowledge that the CHO has been careful to state here that it does not wish to discuss individual residents. I am not asking for anyone's name or PPS number or anything like that; I just want to understand how the testimony of the HSE is so at odds with what the families are telling us. That is really important in the context of people being moved from their home of more than a decade. I am not asking for answers to be provided today but I am asking the HSE to take the matter away and see if it can come up with actual information. The information that has been provided so far is fuzzy.