Complaints by HSE over RTÉ shows are upheld

THE BROADCASTING Authority of Ireland has upheld complaints by the Health Service Executive made against two RTÉ Radio 1 Liveline programmes broadcast on January 19th and 20th.

Both centred on Louise Bayliss, who had expressed concerns on a previous Liveline programme about patient care at St Brendan’s Mental Hospital in Grangegorman, Dublin.

It was broadcast on December 9th, 2011. Ms Bayliss complained that five long-term female patients at St Brendan’s were being moved for the Christmas period from an open ward to a secure unit which already housed six patients. The HSE said this was due to staff shortages and that the women would return to the open ward on January 16th, 2012.

On December 12th Liveline returned to the issue. On December 13th the matter was raised in the Dáil by TDs Joe Costello, Derek Keating, Maureen O’Sullivan and Alex White. Minister of State Kathleen Lynch gave an undertaking to visit the unit.

On January 18th Ms Bayliss was informed her six-month contract with the Irish Advocacy Network as an advocate for mentally ill patients at hospitals around Dublin was terminated. She was three months into the contract. The network is funded by the HSE.

On January 19th, Ms Bayliss spoke of the termination of her contract on Liveline. There, as over subsequent days in print and broadcast media, she claimed the termination of her contract was at the instigation of the HSE. There were calls for her to be reinstated by TDs Richard Boyd Barrett, Derek Keating and Joe Costello.

On January 23rd she was reinstated and Colette Nolan, chief executive of the advocacy network, said: “After more in-depth and intensive consultation with colleagues in the organisation over the last few days, we realise we made an error in this regard.”

The HSE complaint to the broadcasting authority concerned Liveline programmes broadcast on January 19th and 20th where the focus was on the termination of Ms Bayliss’s contract.

The HSE complained that the two Liveline programmes “incorrectly and unfairly” gave the impression that the HSE had put pressure on the advocacy network to end Ms Bayliss’s contract and that this was in response to statements by her on a previous Liveline programme in December 2011 about treatment of patients at St Brendan’s hospital.

It accused the programme of giving the HSE insufficient time to respond on January 19th, of being in breach of its obligations where corroborating facts and taking the HSE view into account were concerned, and accused presenter Joe Duffy of showing bias.

On July 30th the BAI compliance committee upheld the HSE complaints while pointing out that it was not its role to adjudicate on whether there was in fact a relationship between the ending of Ms Bayliss’s contract and the roles and functions of the network and the HSE. However it concluded the programme had not been “fair, objective and impartial to all interests” in its treatment of the issue.