Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

What is happening at St. Mary's Centre Telford - the nursing home, the assisted living housing and the disability services - and indeed what has already happened with the Caritas Convalescence Centre, in terms of the attempted execution of a tactical liquidation and a manufactured insolvency at the expense of the workers who worked providing these services and the residents and service users in the centre and at the homes there, is an absolute scandal. The residents are watching this debate now because what has gone on there threatens perfectly good and viable services specifically and uniquely provided for people with blindness and visual impairment and disability. It is an institution that has been operating since 1860, funded by the public but run by the Sisters of Charity who have decided, essentially using Covid-19 as a cover, to execute a tactical liquidation.

To give the Minister of State a sense of the feelings of the residents I will read out what some of those residents, who have been there, in some cases, 63 and 72 years, are saying:

We want our home back as we knew it. It has been so frightening and threatening having these liquidators here. How would you like it if you had the enemy in your home, your sanctuary? Our home should feel safe and unthreatening. Now it is like a prison. We are afraid to move. I've been here 62 years and my friend has been here 72 years. We've stopped smiling. Instead we are nervous, cannot sleep and it is affecting our mental health so much.

I do not have the time to read them all but the Minister of State will get the sense of fear and anxiety of these residents who are vulnerable, elderly women with visual impairment. They are facing their home and their community being broken up and all of the workers who provided those services being simply dumped.

6 o’clock

The Government needs to step in and do something about this.

The social housing element was originally financed by Dublin City Council and the services were funded by the HSE but the Sisters of Charity-owned companies that run the centre have manufactured an insolvency and are looking for a liquidation that they should not get. This is because the insolvency is manufactured. The companies claim they have liabilities associated with refurbishing the place to bring it up to certain standards. They claimed that the HSE funding might not continue and that they could not afford the redundancies, but the redundancies are happening only because St. Mary’s triggered them - it did not have to – in a nursing home that was actually Covid-free, was run perfectly well and provides excellent services and a home to the residents. This is occurring when the company has €750,000 in the bank. If the redundancies go through, it will cost the taxpayer nearly €1 million. The request is for the Government and the HSE to step in and support the application made for an examiner to be brought in to save the jobs and services and prevent the trauma and anxiety that is now being inflicted on the vulnerable women. I ask the Government to step in. It has the power. It should get the HSE to do the right thing and stop this scurrilous behaviour by the companies owned by the Sisters of Charity.

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