Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, to the House. I acknowledge his commitment to improving services, especially in the area of disability and care.

Serious issues arise in terms of safeguarding all people who are in care in nursing homes, disability centres and children's services. While I acknowledge the vast majority of staff who work in the homes and institutions are dedicated, committed, caring and compassionate, there are serious problems with the quality of care in many centres. Safeguarding legislation is urgently needed. I call on the Minister of State and Members on all sides of the House to act collectively so that we have effective action and a determined Taoiseach to lead a new Cabinet subcommittee to advance the best possible legislation to protect citizens. That must become an immediate priority for the Government. We measure society in terms of how we care for and protect those who are most vulnerable, weak and at risk.

It is almost a year ago since I started to find out exactly what was going on in HIQA, what information it got and what it did with it. Under freedom of information HIQA very kindly decided to charge me the sum of €11,000 to get to the bottom of the situation. Thankfully, when I appealed to the Information Commissioner he quashed HIQA's decision. I will now outline some of the facts that I found.

I will deal with disability centres first, of which we have more than 1,000. There are more than 8,800 residents in the centres and there were 8,177 notifications of concern about care and welfare. Some 4,600 of them were about suspected or confirmed abuse, which is more than 52%. A total of 1,364 related to cases of serious injuries by the residents that required immediate medical or hospital treatment. There were 2,726 allegations of physical abuse, more than 1,000 of psychological abuse and more than 209 of sexual abuse. Some 14% of disability centres were referred to the HIQA regulation risk committee, and 20% of service providers were required to attend meetings to discuss their level of non-compliance with HIQA regulations. A total of 9% of registered centres have additional non-standard conditions applied to their current registration.

A total of 51 centres were issued with a notice of proposal to cancel or refuse their registration, and to date only 18 have registered. There are very serious problems in the centres. In spite of all the thousands of notifications HIQA received, both unsolicited and mandated information, there has been no investigation by HIQA or anyone else into the allegations. There is no memorandum of understanding between the Garda and HIQA. There were discussions on one but it did not happen and that is unacceptable. I have been in touch with the Ombudsman who is ready, willing and able to take up all of those cases if they are sent to him, but that has not happened to date.

We need the Minister of State's support and we need reform. The Government must be committed to that. I know the Minister of State is personally committed to the introduction of safeguarding legislation to ensure each allegation is investigated and that we protect the most vulnerable. During my supplementary questions I will deal with the response of the Minister of State and nursing homes.

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