Tony Mulcahy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The one question that concerns all of us as parents is what will happen to our children and how they will be looked after when we are dead. After seeing the programme last night, I have grave concerns about how our children are looked after.

I heard the chairperson of the psychiatric nurses union speaking yesterday about clinical governance, and Senator Cullinane referred to training. It is not a matter of training somebody to tell them that one does not sit on top of a patient, drag them around the floor or force feed them. That is not about training, that is about how one treats another human being. I have been involved with the domestic violence issue and the type of treatment I saw last night strikes me as much the same. We tend to blame the HSE or its accountability, but the animals who performed in that manner in the programme last night - I can term them as nothing else - unfortunately have the protection of things such as the Haddington Road and Croke Park agreements. The only thing those people should get today is a P45. They should be out the door and down the road.

It is not acceptable practice. They are people with responsibility who are being paid to do the job. Their treatment of the clients was absolutely appalling. Those are the only words that can be used. The Garda might well conduct an investigation as the clients were assaulted, but I believe it is a P45 situation. One gets rid of such people, makes an example of them and starts again. What are the solutions? Must we have cameras monitoring places such as this with some type of oversight whereby they would be monitored appropriately by somebody in that setting? Unfortunately, we might have to do that. Not everybody could monitor that, but I believe that is the required solution from the HSE's perspective. There should be an appropriate monitoring body to monitor these facilities. That is the only thing that will satisfy parents so they will know their children are safe. Their children can range in age up to the mid-70s.

I have been speaking at length about the domestic violence issue since the 1960s, but unfortunately not a great deal has changed in mental health institutions since the 1960s. However, all of these actions are carried out by human beings on other human beings. As I said, I listened to the general secretary of the psychiatric nurses union yesterday and his biggest issue was that there was a lack of clinical governance in this case. It transpired that he had worked there himself. As I listened I wondered if this fellow was for real. What clinical governance? Will somebody tell the person that they should not do that? The person should know they should not do that anyway; they should not have to be trained not to do it. It was the greatest cop-out I have ever heard, instead of criticising some of the union's members and those who were not its members for that behaviour. There were five or six people working in this place at any given time other than at night, which would be normal. There were plenty of staff but the problem was their behaviour.

The only way to deal with this is to have them gone very quickly and teach them a lesson. We can start from there. I will give the Minister whatever support I can. There are parents throughout the country shaking in their shoes today after seeing that performance last night, because one can be sure it is not just happening in one unit, unfortunately. The employees in these facilities need to know that if they are caught, they will be treated appropriately with every measure of the law and lose their jobs. That is final. There is no excuse for these people coming back into any other part of the HSE.