gov - Open Letter to Stakeholders - Secretary General of the Department of Health

I am writing to notify you that the Department of Health has appointed Mr Donie O’Shea as an Independent Support Liaison Officer to engage directly with the families involved in recent allegations on the RTÉ Prime Time programme regarding the collection of data for litigation purposes.

The department can confirm that no more than 35 families are involved in open litigation related to these allegations. Each of these families will be contacted shortly through their solicitor offering the opportunity to engage directly with the Independent Support Liaison Officer.

The department regrets the distress recent media reports may have had on the families involved and is taking steps to ensure that they, and others associated with autism services, are listened to and supported.

The department is committed to publishing the Independent Expert Review by an external Senior Counsel, that was commissioned after allegations were brought to the attention of the department last year. Due to legal implications, including protocols around publishing a protected disclosure and the department’s desire to protect the rights of the discloser, the department is continuing to engage with legal counsel and aims to publish the report next week.

I can confirm that the review found that there was no basis to suggest wrongdoing arising from the allegations made by the discloser.

Again, I would like to reiterate that the Department of Health has never gathered sensitive medical and educational information on children involved in court cases in the manner portrayed in recent media reports.

A team within the Department of Health has been established to assess the facts in respect of the specific allegations made to RTÉ Prime Time programme on 25 March 2021. The team has identified a single video recording in one case file. This video was provided to the department as co-defendants to the litigation, by the Plaintiff’s Solicitors. At no time did the department seek such videos. This review is ongoing and will deal with each of the reported allegations.

The department welcomes an inquiry by the Data Protection Commission (DPC), who is currently investigating data collection practices regarding these cases. I, as Secretary General, along with officials in the department look forward to the findings of this review and where necessary will make improvements based on their recommendations.

The Department of Health is committed to continuing engagement with service providers to improve supports for service users, which will hopefully reduce the need of service users to seek litigation.

Our goal is, and always has been, the improvement of health services for the people of Ireland. This government has provided an unprecedented €100 million additional funding for new developments in 2021, bringing the total funding for disability services to €2.2bn.

Developments in relation to children’s disability services include:

under the national ‘Programme Progressing Disability Services for Children and Young People age 0-18 years’ Children’s Disability Network Teams are being reconfigured so that all children with a disability and their families will have access to services according to their needs as opposed to their diagnosis, where they live or where they go to school ensuring consistency and equity in delivery of disability services for children and young people
an additional €7.8 million was allocated in Sept. 2020 to individual Community Healthcare Organisation areas based on the numbers of overdue Assessments of Need at 30th June 2020, which at the time stood at around 6,500. This work is well underway, and since the work to clear the backlog of Assessments began in September, approximately 3,850 children have had completed Assessments, thus reducing the backlog to approximately 2,650 cases by the end of February. A reduction of almost 60%, with many more underway
Budget 2021 included funding for an additional 100 new therapy posts for Children’s Disability Services which will further improve access to the most appropriate interventions for children. The first 50 of these posts will be in place by the end of June 2021

Your role as stakeholders to the Department of Health, representing many patients and families affected by autism is valued and we will continue to engage and inform you of updates regarding this issue going forward.

Kind regards,

Robert.