Almost 800 complaints were made to the office of the Ombudsman last year about health and social care bodies, including 300 complaints about the HSE, a new report has shown.

Ger Deering was appointed Ombudsman in January 2022 and the role of his office is to investigate complaints from people who feel they have been unfairly treated by certain public service providers, including the HSE, public hospitals, government departments and nursing homes.

According to the Ombudsman’s Annual Report 2022, the office received 4,791 complaints last year – the highest to date and an almost 20% increase on 2021’s figure.

It also responded to 6,710 enquiries, which is an almost 10% increase on 2021’s figure.

A total of 790 complaints were made about the health sector, including 300 about the HSE and 104 about Tusla. Some 29% of the health cases investigated were upheld or partially upheld, while in 30% of cases, the Ombudsman provided some assistance or benefit to the complainant. The remaining 41% of cases were not upheld.

“In 2022, we contacted all areas of the HSE requesting it to amend the information it provided when responding to complaints. This will help ensure that complainants are made aware of their right to complain to the Ombudsman,” the report noted.

It also noted that the Ombudsman continued to monitor progress on the 34 recommendations made in its 2015 report, Learning to Get Better: an investigation into how public hospitals handle complaints.

“The HSE provides updates to our office every six months. It also provides us with its quarterly casebook of complaints received and the learnings from those complaints,” it explained.

The Ombudsman also said that last year, it received a number of complaints in relation to situations where care hours were approved “but where there were no carers available to provide the approved hours”.

“We hope that the recommendations from the report of the Strategic Workforce Advisory Group on Home Carers and Nursing Home Health Care Assistants (Department of Health, October 2022) will result in improvements in this area,” it added.

Meanwhile, speaking at the publication of the report, Mr Deering also highlighted the “shameful” delay in providing transport for people with disabilities in Ireland.

He noted that this is despite a commitment from government over 10 years ago to develop an appropriate scheme, and reports from two government departments highlighting the need for such supports.

“The manner in which people with disabilities continue to be denied access to personal transport supports is nothing short of shameful. Everyone agrees that something needs to be done but no one seems to be willing to take action,” he commented.

He referred to issues with three schemes - the Motorised Transport Grant, the Mobility Allowance, and the Disabled Drivers and Disabled Passengers scheme.

He said that when his predecessors highlighted inequities in these schemes, the response of government was either to discontinue the schemes, or in the case of the Disabled Drivers and Disabled Passengers scheme, to reinforce the inequitable and inadequate eligibility criteria in primary legislation.

Furthermore, that scheme has not had an appeals mechanism in place since November 2021.

In 2013, the government announced that it would introduce an alternative to the Motorised Transport Grant and Mobility Allowance schemes. However, this has still not happened.

“We do not need more committees or reports, we need clear leadership and action. I will continue to highlight this shameful neglect until real progress is achieved,” Mr Deering said.

The full report can be viewed here.