Minister seeks right to comment when service users complain

Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar is to seek permission for Ministers to be allowed to pass comment on individual cases where they believe incorrect claims are being made.

At present, Government departments and authorities such as the Health Service Executive are restricted by data-protection rules when it comes to responding publicly to claims service users make.

The Irish Times understands Mr Varadkar is to write to the Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon requesting permission to speak about cases where the person waives their right to confidentiality.

The development comes after the leaking of an internal Dublin City Council file on a housing campaigner to a newspaper.

Details of the case of Erica Fleming, who has been living in a hotel with her daughter for more than a year, were published in the Sunday Independent.

The report said Ms Fleming had turned down two offers of accommodation allocated through the place-finder service.

Ms Fleming declined to comment on the matter when contacted by the Irish Times. It is understood she is seeking legal advice on the publication of the information.

She has stressed previously she does not want to live in private accommodation because she will be removed from the housing waiting list.

Prevented from speaking

Department of Social Protection sources insisted the Minister's initiative was not linked to any particular individual or case.

“It is something the Minister raised when he was in the Department of Health and now in Social Protection,” a source said.

“There are often people who come forward publicly and share their stories and Ministers are prevented from speaking on them for reasons of confidentiality and data protection.

“And in some cases there are untruths told but Ministers cannot challenge them so there is only one side of the story being told. The purpose of the letter is to seek permission to speak on such cases.

“In the Department of Health there was often people publicising their four-year wait on a waiting list and then when you investigated it was only a matter of months.”

Mr Varadkar is not seeking to waive confidentiality in every case but specifically ones that make their situation public through the media.

Meanwhile, figures released this weekend show the number of homeless children in Dublin has exceeded 2,000 for the first time since current records began.

There were 2,020 children in 993 families in emergency accommodation in the capital last month.

This compares with 1,894 in 939 families the previous month. The data, from the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, are for the week of 25th to 31st July.

Accommodated in hotels

They represent a 71 per cent increase in the number of homeless children since July 2015, when there were 1,185 in 556 families.

Of those homeless in Dublin last month, some 1,490 children in 731 families were accommodated in hotels – usually in single rooms without cooking or laundry facilities – while 530 children in 262 families were in purpose-provided homeless accommodation.

The vast majority of the families entering homelessness are coming from the private rented sector, while two-thirds of them are headed by single parents, usually mothers.