REPORT:PUBLIC SERVANTS are suffering from "a serious lack of knowledge" about their responsibilities to the disabled under three-year-old legislation, Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly has complained.
Under the Disability Act, 2005, public bodies are required to ensure public buildings, services and information are accessible to people with all types of disabilities.
However, many of the complainants to her office should first have dealt with the body concerned - except for the fact they had no idea to whom they should complain. "When I advise the person that they must do this, they invariably tell me that there is no information available to let them know how to make a complaint," she said, adding that many were not aware of a National Disability Authority code of practice.
In her fourth annual report, the ombudsman reported that 2,578 valid complaints were made last year - up by 14 per cent due, mostly, to the fact that she now has powers to investigate the actions of the health service and the State's public and voluntary hospitals.
Of the 2,520 complaints dealt with last year, 19 per cent were resolved in whole or in part, and in 622 (25 per cent) more cases some assistance was provided. The Ombudsman now has 3,474 valid complaints on file. The number of complaints about hospitals - which last year concerned poor communications and record-keeping, lack of dignity for dying patients and the failure to apologise for poor conduct - will rise, she predicted.
In one case, a dying elderly woman was given three times the dosage of the anti-depressant medication she should have got for four days because a mistake was made on handwritten drugs records by Beaumont Hospital.
Her family complained, saying the extra dosage left her heavily sedated, and "this impacted on her ability to communicate with them over the last days of her life".
Once it discovered the error, Beaumont immediately alerted the family and apologised, changed its day-to-day operating rules and sent nurses on a training course, and it now intends to put one of its staff in charge to prevent this from ever recurring.
Nurses had made similar mistakes when creating new hand- written records in seven other cases in the hospital over the previous two years, it emerged, after Beaumont had checked 170 other cases that exhibited a difficulty. However, Beaumont emphasised its safety record last night: "There are approximately 500,000 prescriptions written in Beaumont each year and approximately 4.5 million administrations of medication under these prescriptions."
The Ombudsman said that each decision made by her office not only helped the individual concerned, but helped other public bodies to learn from the mistake and improve their own services.
The Ombudsman is to develop links with her Polish counterpart and run an information campaign here to help Irish-based Poles to help them "in their dealings with the Irish public service".
In one of her decisions, 34 foster parents in Laois and Offaly received €67,000 in backdated respite payments after they objected to a decision by the local HSE office to deny them the support - even though the payment was made in other areas.
Cork City Council and Tralee Town Council, meanwhile, backed down on decisions to deny apartment occupants on-street resident parking permits because each of the apartments already had one permit-holder.
Following a complaint, the Department of Social and Family Affairs withdrew a decision to stop paying child benefit for a girl aged between 16 and 18 who was taught at home by her mother.
