Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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2294. To ask the Minister for Health the outcome of the Health Service Executive review of demand and capacity for the national counselling service referred to at Action 19.6 of the Action Plan for Survivors and Former Residents of Mother and Baby and County Home Institutions. [20134/25]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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As this is a service issue I have asked the Health Service Executive to respond directly to the Deputy.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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2295. To ask the Minister for Health if she will publish the Health Service Executive review of demand and capacity for the national counselling service referred to at Action 19.6 of the Action Plan for Survivors and Former Residents of Mother and Baby and County Home Institutions. [20135/25]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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As this is a service issue I have asked the Health Service Executive to respond directly to the Deputy.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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2296. To ask the Minister for Health the progress that has been made on the 'health research on the future needs of former residents' referred to at Action 19.5 of the Action Plan for Survivors and Former Residents of Mother and Baby and County Home Institutions. [20136/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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The Irish Government established ‘The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes” and certain related Matters in 2015. A collaborative forum was established in 2018 by the then Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, comprising former residents, academics and advocates.

One of the recommendations made concerned a package of health, wellbeing and social care supports for former residents, for which the Government subsequently established a Working Group in 2019. Related to the recommendation of the Working Group to advance a package of supports to directly benefit former residents, a programme of health research was recommended to inform future provision of health, wellbeing and social care supports for former residents.

The Department of Health wrote to the Health Research Board in late 2020 seeking support to manage an application, peer review process and (subject to approval) contract/monitoring process for a research programme, to be coordinated by the Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (TILDA) team. The goal was to undertake this new research programme on a representative sample of former residents.

Following receipt of an application from TILDA, the HRB convened an international panel of experts to review the application. The panel described the research programme as a unique and important opportunity whose findings have the potential for significant impact both nationally and internationally. However, they also highlighted significant concerns regarding the methods and design of the study.

A significant constraint was the lack of access by the TILDA team to a database of former residents to enable appropriate characterisation of the sample and elaboration of a sampling frame within the application.

In 2021, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth confirmed that the only database, that which was generated to enable the work of the Commission, was not accessible for any other purposes.

The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth also confirmed that it held descriptive aggregate statistics and non-identifiable information linked to their work to support the Commission and offered to describe this for the TILDA team in the event that it could be of use.

The HRB met with the TILDA team in February 2022 to explore if the aggregate statistics could assist in the absence of any database. TILDA clarified in March 2022 that it was their considered opinion that the proposed research programme as envisaged was not feasible.

The Department of Health, with the assistance of its agency, the Health Research Board, continues to explore methods of facilitating this important research. In particular, the use of a convenience sample, rather than a representative sample could potentially enable the work to be carried out in a meaningful way.