Members of the public dissatisfied with the manner in which they are treated at any of the large Dublin teaching hospitals and who feel their concerns have not been properly dealt with by these hospitals will be able to complain to the Ombudsman from January 1st next year.
Ombudman Emily O'Reilly said yesterday that provision for the making of such complaints to her office was made in the 2004 Health Act and she had been "patiently" waiting since for guidelines on a statutory complaints mechanism to be drawn up by the Health Service Executive.
However, the guidelines still have not been published which she found "frustrating" and as a result she had decided to go ahead herself and accept complaints from the public from the beginning of next year, whether the guidelines were in place at that stage or not.
"Well I've actually made a decision now that I'm going to start taking complaints from the first of January because this statutory complaints mechanism was flagged from the Health Act 2004 and we are now at the end of 2006.
"I've been told several times 'we're still working on it, we're still working on it'.
"I appreciate the HSE is snowed under but this is, to my mind, a very critical part of health reform and I have been to lots of conferences talking about a new health complaints system coming onstream but it actually hasn't come onstream so I'm going to start taking complaints myself in January," she said.
"I believe I have the authority to do it," she added.
Up to now the only hospital type complaints dealt with by her office were complaints made against HSE hospitals, but not the large voluntary hospitals such as the Mater and Tallaght, which deal with huge numbers of patients every year, will come under her remit.
"Up to now it was just the health board hospitals that came within my remit. Now all the public voluntary hospitals are coming within my remit," she said. Also coming under her remit will be agencies funded by the HSE, such as providers of services for the intellectually disabled.
A spokesman for the HSE said the policies, procedures and guidelines around the statutory complaints procedure were "almost complete".
He added that the HSE had to wait for regulations governing the statutory complaints procedure to be enacted by statutory instrument.
Meanwhile Ms O'Reilly, who was speaking at the annual conference of the Irish Association of Directors of Nursing and Midwifery in Tullamore, Co Offaly, stressed the need for good record keeping in hospitals and the need for hospitals to ensure patients could die with dignity.
However, a director of nursing at a hospital caring for elderly patients said patients in her hospital could not die with dignity.
"They have to die in the middle of 10 to 12 other patients with commodes on either side of them," she said.
Minister for Health Mary Harney, who also attended the conference, said she accepted there was a need to refurbish many old geriatric hospitals.
Ms O'Reilly also said there needed to be some sort of advocacy service though which people could make complaints without feeling afraid.