Author: Ken Foxe

The HSE reported more than 2,000 data breaches last year including almost 1,050 where Covid-19 vaccination certificates were sent to the wrong person.

Other incidents notified by the health services including the discovery of patient lists outside a public premises in Donegal and on the grounds of a hospital in Galway.

In June, a breach was reported where a third party had accessed data related to Covid-19 testing in “an unauthorised manner”.

There were also dozens of cases where appointment letters were sent to the wrong person or to the wrong address or email account, according to records released under FOI.

Missing files were also reported on numerous occasions as was one case where a car was broken into and an “appointment book disturbed”.

In Galway, old patient medical charts were accessed by a third party who had entered a derelict property in the county.

Another case involving a disability service in Co Clare saw the personal information of a service user shared with their ex-partner.

In Limerick, a patient chart was located by a member of the public in June while in one breach, the incorrect results of interview ratings in a job competition were disclosed to third parties.

There were also deliberate breaches reported including one in the west of the country where an employee “intentionally accessed [the] medical records of [a] colleague”.

A garda insisted that the doors of a DART train stranded on the day of the Bray Air Show be opened with passengers inside already “distressed”.

A timeline of the events – which brought chaos to transport services in late July – explained how it took just six and a half minutes before the first passenger forced the doors of a train open after it came to a stop in sweltering conditions.

It explained how after one train came to a stop on the train line, both the gardaí and coast guard had requested the doors be opened so passengers could be evacuated.

Seven minutes later, the driver reported that a garda sergeant at the scene now “insists that doors should be opened” to let passengers disembark.

Another entry in the timeline said many on board were being evacuated through a local golf course; however, a “large group of trespassers” were moving north along the train line towards Shankill in South Dublin.

Irish Rail received around sixty formal complaints in the aftermath of the disruption with one passenger saying they were stuck on a train that was “rammed and hot”.

“The driver seems oblivious of the dangers of what is happening,” they said, “please tell him urgently, then call me. We need to move or get off the train.”

Another wrote: “Why’s the DART to Bray stopped? My daughter is in it with her two-year-old … it’s a bloody sauna, so dangerous. People just forced the doors open and everyone getting out onto the tracks. What’s going on? Sort it out!”

Gardaí have lost nearly 134,000 days of duty over the past two years after officers suffered injuries while on duty and were forced off sick.

That included more than 33,000 days of illness where a garda suffered a malicious injury while at work and 266 days of sick leave for officers maliciously attacked off-duty.

In total, An Garda Síochána reported more than 204,000 days of illness last year with around 35% of that due to injuries suffered by members.

There was a total of 71,761 days of sick leave attributed to occupational injury last year including 41,281 days where an accidental injury was suffered.

A further 5,747 illness days were caused by road traffic accidents with just over 17,500 days resulting from malicious injuries, either on or off duty.

There were also 455 sick days marked as a work-related musculoskeletal injury, and 6,098 attributed to an occupational injury from duty.

Separately, prison officers have had to take more than 17,000 days of sick leave over the past two years due to mental health issues including stress, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and panic attacks.

The Irish Prison Service said that last year 257 officers had been off work for a combined 5,769 days due to psychiatric or psychological issues.

That worked out at an average of 22 days per illness for the officers as some staff struggled with the stress of their volatile and sometimes dangerous working environment.

The toll of stress on prison officers was even higher in 2020, according to data released under FOI, when 11,492 days were taken due to mental health issues.

That worked out at an average of nearly forty-four sick days each for the 262 officers who had to take time off because of stress, anxiety, or a related illness.

Prisoners made more than 900 formal complaints last year including over eighty relating to assault, ill-treatment, racial discrimination, or intimidation.

The Irish Prison Service said they had received 84 Category A complaints last year, which deal with the most serious of allegations.

More than a third of those – or thirty individual complaints – related to a single prison, Cloverhill Remand Prison in West Dublin

There were a further 17 Category A complaints at the Midlands Prison in Co Laois, and nine from the high-security jail at Portlaoise.

Irish embassy credit cards were used to pay congestion charge fines in London, for the purchase of GB£2,100 worth of handmade chocolates, to pay an Airbnb bill for a Paris apartment of €3,800, and for tens of thousands of euros in hotel costs.

Copies of card statements from some of Ireland’s most high-profile embassies detail how congestion charge penalties of GB£80 were paid on two separate occasions at the Embassy in London.

The U.K. Embassy also paid out more than £2,100 on handmade chocolate from the Kerry-based artisan producer Dingle Chocolates, with a further £827 spent with the same supplier on a later date.

A website to give TDs easier online access to what is going on in Leinster House ended up costing more than €1.88 million.

The digital parliament project had originally been budgeted at €1.78 million when it was given formal approval in the summer of 2020.

A business case for the project said it would make life easier for TDs to keep track of Dáil business, allow for publication in real-time, and for the sharing of content on social media.

A detailed log of expenditure on the project reveals that costs in progressing it in 2018 and 2019 came to a total of just over €160,000.

A further €882,000 was spent on the digital parliament initiative in 2020 with bills for last year coming in at a combined €840,000.

The Oireachtas said the total cost of the project – including an estimated €1.77 million in costs for external providers – had been €1.88 million.

The business case for the initiative said order papers for Dáil business had previously been published in hard copy and as a “static PDF”.

This made it difficult for people to search for content with the new project intended to provide a new electronic “one-stop shop” for TDs.

The business case said: “Members will be provided with a dynamic schedule for the first time: business will be published in real time and members can check in and out when they choose.

“The system will make business flexible and useful to members, empowering them and removing barriers to access.”

Dublin Airport Authority were prepared to pay “whatever is required” as the Defence Forces said they were being asked to cross a “Rubicon of sorts” in helping with the security delays that have dogged the airport.

The military were put on standby early last month to step in to ease lengthy queues at Dublin Airport and avoid further “reputational damage” from weeks of queuing chaos.

In correspondence with their parent department, the Defence Forces said they would need as much “lead in time as possible” to get prepared for airport duties.

An email from Major General Anthony McKenna on June 23 said: “I think that this point is required to be made forcefully before we find ourselves committed and deployed underprepared in an uncertain task.”

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe was warned that a hefty fine for AIB over tracker mortgages could represent a “negative surprise” as the state prepared to sell a significant stake in the bank.

Officials explained how two previous attempts to offload a large chunk of AIB had fallen at the final hurdle in November last year and again in March this year after the “war in Ukraine intervened”.

They said that the time was right in June to sell down a major stake in the bank with “high quality investors” ready to make sizable trades for AIB shares.

A submission for Minister Donohoe said there were already half a dozen institutions who had indicated a firm interest in investing around €50 million each in the bank.

It said: “What is noteworthy is that these firms are all high-quality names and all but one are what the industry describes as ‘long only’ i.e. your traditional pension and investment funds as opposed to hedge funds that tend to have a short time horizon.”

An allegation of a forged signature, a lack of social distancing in court, and frosty conditions inside a courthouse were among the complaints made to the Courts Service last year.

The Courts Service said they had received a total of 131 formal complaints in 2021, of which more than twenty related directly to the performance of judges.

In September, a person alleged that there was a signature forged on court documents while in another case in November, a person who made a complaint said a copy of it had been shown to the solicitor they had raised concerns about.

A complaint about the lack of heating in Galway courthouse was made in December while the absence of social distancing in place at Cork Circuit Court was also flagged in May.

In other incidents logged, a person complained about the “conduct of [a] staff member at [a] meeting” in a Courts Service building in Dublin.

There were 22 cases of complaints against the judiciary with judges of the District Court, Circuit Court, and the High Court all the subject of complaints.

A board member of the HSE said that comments made in leaked recordings of Department of Health meetings were an “assault on the professional competence, judgment and diligence” of the board.

In an email to fellow board members, Fergus Finlay described details from the recordings as “sneers, not factual criticisms” and said they were “deeply unprofessional”.

Mr Finlay said the comments demanded a “full and complete retraction” and said they could not be allowed to stand, given their impact on the reputations of those working for the HSE.

He said the HSE needed to defend their colleagues when they were “unfairly and gratuitously attacked” and said their trust had been undermined by “cheap sniping”.

The comments followed reports based on secret whistle-blower recordings of meetings of Department of Health staff which were highly critical of the HSE.

The recordings contained comments referring to “fake targets”, concerns about the health service’s “financial sloppiness”, and the credibility of health budgets.