Two blind residents of St Mary’s disability centre staged a protest outside the offices of the business firm Baker Tilly on Holles Street, Dublin, today. They proceeded from there to the Department of Health.

The two women are protesting about what they say are disorganised conditions and lack of security at the Merrion Road centre.
Baker Tilly is the joint liquidator of St Mary’s Centre (Telford), a company which ran both a nursing home and a public-funded disability centre, on lands owned by the Religious Sisters of Charity on Merrion Road, South Dublin.

Sisters of Charity are the sole shareholders of the company – although the nuns have bizarrely tried to claim that they have had no involvement in its operation or its subsequent closure.

The company cited a lack of funding and announced its decision to close its doors in June. On October 1, the High Court gave the controversial green light to the liquidation of the firm, denying staff and residents their request that an examiner should be appointed to assess the viability of the business.

Searching for Stability

Baker Tilly's representatives told the court of plans to lease the disability centre to the HSE – ostensibly to avoid relocating its 18, female, disabled residents. Since then, however, one resident has been moved from her home.

The 35 residents of the nursing home were relocated to other centres between June and September, a process which prompted anxiety and distress among the elderly and their families. Hot Press has covered the issue extensively.

Over 20 nursing home staff have also been let go without pay since the summer.

Clare Heffernan, who lives in one of the public-funded apartments on St Mary's campus, is adamant that a state of uncertainty has been created at the centre with an influx of unskilled, new staff.

“Since the Baker Tilly hand-over everything has gotten very chaotic,” Clare told Hot Press. “They have left us to a bunch of unknowns; the staff has not been introduced to me, even though I requested it. I still don't know who the staff are.”

In Heffernan account, residents sometimes have to guide the staff in how to carry out their duties.

“One of the nurses admitted that she finds disability care challenging,” she explained, “and whenever there's an issue, she is stressed on the phone to me. As far as I can see, there is no structure – they are playing it by ear and dealing with issues as they crop up.”

A member of the nursing home staff, who was laid-off recently, had previously told Hot Press that Baker Tilly is deploying some of the remaining workers in the disability centre – and that the two areas of care are sharply different.

“We need stability,” Heffernan said. “Our stability is gone. I personally feel we can't speak to anyone in charge; the facts are there. So I just feel I need to go out and protest.

“We are human beings: you can't just abandon us and our care. As long as I am alive, I will continue to fight for my rights. I hope they will listen to our needs."

Forcibly Taken Away

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett had previously told Hot Press that the decision to liquidate St Mary’s Centre was ‘heartless’.

“I think the fact that the liquidators took no account whatsoever of the human beings involved in this liquidation with disability and blindness or the consequences for them or their guide dogs having to be moved to other accommodations just shows the complete heartlessness and lack of humanity involved," Boyd Barrett said.

Some of the residents of the disability centre were pupils of the all-girls boarding school for the blind on the grounds of St Mary’s, run by the Religious Sisters of Charity.

One resident alleges abuse by a particular nun at the centre.

The St Mary’s controversy is set against the backdrop of the controversial bill, voted into legislation last week, which has been taken by campaigners as sealing of mother and baby homes records for 30 years. However, the Government has committed to ensuring that this will not be the outcome.

The so called Sisters of Charity ran the homes, with children often being forcibly taken away from their mothers and put up for adoption – or indeed effectively sold.

It is believed that 10,000 women and girls were forced to serve time, and labour without any form of payment, in the laundries from 1922 to 1996 when the last one closed.