Ms Liz Reynolds:

I thank the Deputy for his kind words about St. Michael’s House. We are very proud of the services and the staff who work with us. I will leave the question on capital for schools to my colleague, Mr. Devereux.

I can only speak for St. Michael’s House on whether we have the resources and if we are ready for the change in need. We are doing our best with what we have. What is needed is an agreed model of service provision that is funded appropriately and that can react to changing need, especially with an ageing cohort. We need that flexibility and a recognition of changing need, as well as a recognition that we cannot continue to do more with the same or less.

As I said, we have schools which are independent under a patronage group of the board of directors of St. Michael’s House. My experience of how education and health work together is that there are areas of that in which we could all improve. Service providers, and St. Michael’s House is no different, can feel we are in the middle of that relationship so we would welcome any dialogue that would ensure the two Departments work together with service providers in the future.

As a section 38 organisation, we follow the complaints procedure that is designated nationally. We have a complaints procedure. We do not always get everything right. I assure the Deputy that service users voice their complaints in a way that gets to the executive. We have a service user forum to hear issues from service users. In relation to family complaints or complaints from staff, all those procedures are in place. We record them and report them to the HSE on a monthly basis. We also report compliments although we might not record all the compliments that we should. I meet families regularly. I have communicated to parents and families about coming in and meeting me if they wish. Many families have taken that up and from that there have been complaints.

On recruitment to the CDNT, the Deputy will be aware that recruitment of a specialist multidisciplinary clinical team is a challenge throughout the country and not just for St. Michael’s House. However, our four CDNTs have approximately 82 whole-time equivalents in total and we have 64 WTEs in place so our vacancies are not as great as some others, although there was a time when the number was own at 48 WTEs in place.

The recruitment pause is having an impact on management and administration. CDNT staff are on the front line so there is a derogation for them. We have been able to fill front-line posts, including those on the CDNT team. However, the derogation process did prevent us from taking in people as quickly as we would have liked because of a requirement to fill in numerous and onerous forms to align with the derogation process. Happily, in the last couple of weeks, the HSE has stated that we are no longer required to fill in those forms for derogation.

The last question was on the 30 places rescinded last year. That was a complicated process. Effectively, St. Michael’s House and the HSE should have communicated to families earlier. We did what we had always done, which was to hope that premises would appear – we would get premises, funding for capital and staff - but it became evident at a time that we would not be able to accommodate all those referrals. Formal offers were never given but we were not able to accommodate all those referrals. I can say that we did take on people last year. I understand from the 30 referrals that the HSE referred to other providers. I do not know the outcome of that.

I will pass to Mr. Devereux on the capital project in Ballymun.