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Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly publishes four Reports into complaints which she successfully settled

Date released: 22.09.2009

• Cancer patient treated abroad gets €8,543 in medical bills paid by HSE – Department backdates over €7,000 in illness benefit.

• Organic farmer taken off approved growers register gets €4,528 REPS money back from Department – records not kept due to illness.

• Lone parent gets HSE decision refusing an exceptional needs payment for furniture reversed.

• Dundalk council house tenant gets right to buy dwelling upheld.

The Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly has today ( 22 September 2009) published full details of four complaints she has successfully resolved. The Ombudsman periodically publicises case reports on her website in order to increase public awareness of the wide-ranging work of her Office. These case reports will be of interest to the general public as well as public representatives and organisations who provide advice and support to people experiencing difficulties in their dealing with public bodies.

Commenting, the Ombudsman said “For the complainants involved it is not simply the case that their grievances were pursued and that their complaints were upheld, but that in all four cases the public bodies reversed their original decisions. The constructive engagement with my Office by the H.S.E, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Department of Social and Family Affairs and Dundalk Town Council in each case is to be welcomed. It is also a testimony to their commitment to better standards of public service for their customers and their willingness, following engagement with my office, to look again with an open mind at decisions which adversely impacted on people”.

Case 1 - Cancer patient treated abroad gets €8,543 in medical bills paid by HSE – Department backdates over €7,000 in illness benefit.

A single woman, an only child, came to Dublin to work from another EU country. In December 2006, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma - a form of cancer. Her consultant at the Mater University Hospital recommended that she be treated in her home country, not because she couldn't get appropriate treatment in Ireland, but because at home she would get the significant after care and support she needed from family and friends. Back home, the woman was told that she needed a form E-112 from Ireland to allow her to get State funded hospital treatment. She hadn't been told about the form before she left Ireland.  She applied to the HSE for the form and was refused.  She lost her subsequent appeal and then came to me for help in July 2008. The HSE told me that her application had failed because she could have got the same treatment in Ireland.  After extensive discussions between my Office, the HSE, the Mater and the Department of Health and Children, the HSE finally told the young woman that it was responsible for all her treatment expenses in her home country and asked for all the relevant invoices.

The HSE subsequently paid medical bills amounting to €8,543.  The Department of Social and Family Affairs also awarded her backdated illness benefit totalling over €7,000.

Case 2 - Organic farmer taken off approved growers register gets €4,528 REPS money back from Department – records not kept due to illness.

A woman in County Laois complained about penalties imposed on her by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for breaching the terms of the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS). The breach centred on the removal of her organic growers licence by the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association.  Without the licence, the woman couldn't comply with her REPS Plan and so the Department recouped her REPS payments. The woman said that illness had stopped her from keeping her organic records up to date and that was why she had lost the licence.  As the illness had been medically certified, I decided that the breach had been due to circumstances out of her control and that she deserved some sympathy.

Following my intervention, The Department reviewed the case and agreed with my assessment of the circumstances. The complainant got a REPS refund of  € 4,528.

Case 3 - Lone parent gets HSE decision refusing an exceptional needs payment for furniture reversed.

A lone parent of a nine-year-old child from County Kilkenny, complained about the way HSE, South had treated her when she went looking for help in getting furniture for her local authority home.  At the time, she had a weekly income of €350.16 and needed to buy basic household goods including bedding, a cooker and a table and chairs. The HSE made an Exceptional Needs Payment (ENP) to the woman of €2,039, which she said wasn't enough. She claimed that she still couldn't afford a cooker, a bed for her young daughter or cupboards.  Her appeal to the HSE was rejected. The HSE, following the intervention of my Office, agreed to review the case. The full details of the review, which include complex administrative issues, are available on the Ombudsman website.  In the end, the HSE agreed to award the woman an extra €500 which the woman told my Office she then used to buy a cooker, a small wardrobe, and single bed and mattress for her daughter.

During the case, my staff noticed that the "Ready Reckoner" used by the HSE to calculate the guide cost of household items hadn't been updated since July 2003.  The HSE agreed to update it with effect from 1 April 2009, to take account of Consumer Price Index movements in the intervening period and retail competition.  This resulted in an increase in the guide figure for some items and a reduction in others.

Case 4 - Dundalk council house tenant gets right to buy dwelling upheld.

I received a complaint that Dundalk Town Council had refused to allow a tenant to buy the house he was renting. The Council claimed that the house was intended for older people and so wasn't within the scope of the tenant purchase scheme.  The complainant said the Council was wrong, as the house had never been lived in by an elderly person. The Town Council's tenant purchase scheme does comply with the relevant Regulations, which allow for the exclusion from the scheme of certain dwellings which are suitable for elderly people. This is to make sure that an adequate supply for the elderly is maintained. Nonetheless, the issue at the heart of the complaint was whether the tenant's house was in fact an older person's dwelling.  It emerged that none of the tenants who had lived in the house since it was built could be regarded as elderly and the complainant himself was in his forties.  Therefore, the council's decision was not in accordance either with its own tenant purchase scheme or with the governing regulations. The Council had also said that it was refusing to sell the house to the tenant in the interests of good estate management.  The council does have discretion in this regard but I needed to find out whether it was exercising that discretion reasonably. The complainant said he had never been told that he wouldn't be able to buy his house. I wondered therefore, given that the type of house in question was usually lived by single people or by childless couples, whether people were being discriminated against on the grounds of family status. Were they disadvantaged simply because they lived in smaller houses that the Council might want to retain for the elderly? In the end, I decided that the house had not been specifically designed for an older person and that the Council had not shown that the sale of the house would jeopardise good estate management.  Its decision not to sell the house was therefore wrong.  The complainant had been adversely affected and the Council's decision was improperly discriminatory and contrary to fair or sound administration.

Following discussions with the Council, the tenant was transferred to a similar size house which the Council said it would be agreeable to sell under the tenant purchase scheme.  The Council did want to retain the first house as, for a number of reasons, it was very suitable for elderly people.  The complainant was happy with the outcome.

For media and other inquiries contact: 
Dave Glynn - Head of Communications and Research
Tel: 01 639 5714  / 087 236 1884     email: david_glynn@ombudsman.gov.ie

The above cases can be found in the Sample Cases section of our website.  The following are links to the cases referred to above.

• Case 1 - Cancer patient treated abroad gets €8,543 in medical bills paid by HSE
• Case 2 - Organic farmer taken off approved growers register gets €4,528 REPS money back from Department
• Case 3 - Lone parent gets HSE decision refusing an exceptional needs payment for furniture reversed
• Case 4 - Dundalk council house tenant gets right to buy dwelling upheld

Ends

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