Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This morning saw the publication of Safeguarding Ireland's comprehensive discussion paper on safeguarding vulnerable adults. It called for the establishment of an independent national adult safeguarding authority, a recommendation I fully support. The chairperson commented:

There needs to be a Statutory obligation on State bodies to do more than respond to crises. They also need to have accountability to take steps which prevent adult abuse and uphold people's rights.

It is a timely reminder for a number of reasons, as this week we debate the Assisted Decision-Making Capacity Bill and, disturbingly, over the weekend, we saw revealed in reports by Maeve Sheehan in the Sunday Independent, Kitty Holland inThe Irish Timesand Catherine Reilly in The Medical Independent further major concerns arising from the Brandon case in Donegal and the safeguarding issues it highlighted. The latest report, apparently delivered internally within the HSE, now contains allegations of rape going back to 1992. It is also revealed in correspondence between the HSE and HIQA, dated 7 March this year, that HIQA's deputy chief inspector of social services called for "The review of governance structures should not be limited to local... level but should also include the overall national governance and oversight structures used to identify and respond to issues that may arise...".

The Medical Independent revealed that a social care risk register for the safeguarding and protection team, SPT, dating from 2021, showed that risks related to staffing were ongoing. The SPT has been operating at 75% capacity since March 2020 due to staff redeployment. There was a risk of the SPT "not being able to continue to provide a cohesive service across CHO 1 if staffing falls any further due to leave or illness of remaining staff”. On 28 June 2021, another staffing risk was recorded, which was due for review on 3 July. It read:

Due to 50 per cent reduction in staff there is a significant risk that the safeguarding team may not be in a position to provide a cohesive service across CHO 1 [again]. We currently have no staff in Donegal and have lost 0.5 of our staff in Cavan/Monaghan.

This was all happening while I was being told by the HSE that everything was fine.

I do not believe these allegations are new to the HSE. They were part of what the whistleblower told me in 2016, they were part of what I brought to the HSE at that time, and were in the available HSE files at Ard Gréine Court. I believe they were suppressed by management within the HSE at all levels, right up to the very top, and only for the dogged determination of the whistleblower, these journalists, myself and, thankfully, the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Rabbitte, all this would have been conveniently swept under the carpet.

I am calling on the Government and the senior Minister finally to stand up to the HSE, to stop accepting mediocre management and lack of transparency and to get the Brandon report and other linked reports published in full, so we can confidently put in place the measures to ensure this never happens again.

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