Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the response. I am well aware of the three beds and the possible ten beds but we had 22 beds there so we are basically halving the service. It is not what was there before but that is for another day. I was raising the concerns of residents and families. I got information from the residents that people were coerced. The Minister said people were relocated. According to minutes of a special meeting of the HSE safety and quality committee on 8 February 2023, "some members of the Committee expressed dissatisfaction with the need to transfer the residents away from the Midleton area contrary to their expressed wishes" so it was not a smooth transaction for some of the people and I feel we have let them down. They did not have options so this is certainly an infringement of their civil liberties. Taking them from a place that is more compliant and putting them in a place that is less compliant is moving in the opposite direction to the model in Sláintecare, which is an integrated service. Moving them into the middle of nowhere instead of Sarsfield Court is bonkers.

While I welcome aspects of the Minister of State's response, how much would it have cost to keep those services and how much will it cost now to halve the services? We will not even have the additional services that go with it. I do not know what is happening with the day care services there. The dental services have the community hospital service and the doctor's service across the road. To make it worse, this is a precursor because a number of other HIQA reports are coming down the line that mention St. Brigid's in Tipperary, where we will be fighting the same battle; St. Brigid's in Portlaoise; and another one in Clifden. I am raising the flag to say there is no oversight in the HSE, which seems to have free rein. When you have committee members saying at a meeting "yeah lads, we fecked up on this and we probably fecked up on that but are we going to bury it?", how do I get an answer to prove that I told you so? I am getting the runaround again. It is very frustrating.

See this speech in context