FINE GAEL and Labour are seeking to have a report issued by the Ombudsman on recent dealings with the HSE discussed at the next meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children.
The next meeting of the committee takes place on Tuesday, July 27th, and Fine Gael spokesman on children Charlie Flanagan said he was asking the committee to deal with “this issue of national importance”.
Jan O’Sullivan, Labour’s spokeswoman on health, said she would be writing to the chairman of the committee, Seán Ó Fearghail, to place the matter on the agenda for the next meeting, and Alex White, the party’s spokesman on children, said the matters raised in the report must be considered in detail by the Oireachtas.
The report, entitled Gagging the Ombudsman?was laid before the Dáil and Seanad on Thursday last, the last day of sitting, and was also published on the Ombudsman's website.
In it, Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly says that a threatened court action by the HSE, which never materialised, caused her to withhold from the Dáil and Seanad a special report which was already printed in relation to an investigation into a complaint against the HSE.
The original complaint, dating from 2008, concerned two agencies who provide guardian ad litem services for children in care. They sought the Ombudsman’s intervention when the HSE failed to refer a dispute on the payment of fees for taxation to the courts.
Ms O’Reilly prepared a report on the investigation, which was rejected by the HSE, which said it breached the “in camera” rule relating to proceedings involving children in care and that there were serious legal difficulties in accepting it.
In November 2008, she received a letter from the HSE’s solicitors threatening a High Court injunction to prevent her from bringing this report to the Oireachtas.
The HSE also made her office a notice party in proceedings before the District Court relating to the release of information to her in the course of her investigation. These proceedings continued until May 2009, with over eight hearings, and cost the Ombudsman’s office €52,000 in legal fees, which were awarded against the HSE.
Ms O’Reilly described the actions of the HSE in this matter as perverse, adding: “The HSE’s actions were unwarranted and contrary in the sense that my investigation had nothing to do with ‘in camera’ proceedings other than the service provided by the complainant agencies involved children who were the subject of court proceedings. The complaint had to do with money.
“A striking feature of my experience is the extent to which engagement on the issues was delegated by the HSE to legal advisers,” she said. “There were occasion when it appeared that nobody at management level within the HSE was actually aware of all the developments.
“It was a frustrating, wasteful, dispiriting process”, adding that the possibility had to be considered that it was deliberately designed to block publication of the report.
“It is wholly unsatisfactory,” said Mr Flanagan. “Clearly there is no limit to the HSE’s bizarre attitude to transparency. It seems its priorities are entirely misplaced, spending money on lawyers’ advice instead of funding child-care services.”
Ms O’Sullivan said this issue raised questions about the HSE culture and ethos. Mr White said the matters raised reflected extremely poorly on the HSE and raised extremely serious issues.
Child law expert Geoffrey Shannon, said the in camera rule was there for a very good reason, to protect the rights of children to privacy.
“It is not there to protect the system,” he said.
He added that the legislature had recognised the need for reporting of childcare proceedings, by providing a “window” for doing so in the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2007.
“I am surprised that the facility has not been availed of. People want transparency and accountability,” he said.