R**esidents of St. Mary****’**s protest Baker Tilly and the Department of Health following the closure and approved liquidation of the Merrion road care home – To demand a return to the services of a disability centre and to stop the treatment of residents as those of a nursing home. They call on the Minister For Health to save these vital services and defend the publicly funded social housing for women with disabilities for now and the Future.
Clare Heffernan, a visually impaired resident of Saint Mary’s, along with a former pupil of the former Sisters of Charity School & Home for Blind Females, supported by the Save St Marys Campaign & People Before Profit Dublin Bay South, will protest the controversial closure of the disability centre on Wednesday the 27th of October 2020 at 1pm on Holles Street.
The protest will start at Baker Tilly offices and will end at the Department of Health. Protestors will be calling for an end to the insecurity and upset caused by the closure, asking for the centre to be taken into public ownership and out of the hands of the religious order.
Formally established by the Sisters of Charity as a boarding school for the blind and visually impaired, the centre is home to 35 blind or visually impaired women, some of whom were pupils of the school. The previous general manager of the home, William Corkery cited “funding issues” as the primary reason for closure, promising that the winding down of the home would be carried out “in a careful and considerate manner”.
Following a High Court hearing about the alleged financial state of St. Mary’s, the possibility of examinership was suggested to save the care home. However the board of directors – St Mary’s Centre (Telford) company – pushed for a prompt insolvency. Management of the centre is now being carried out by Baker Tilly, a firm of financial advisors hired by St. Mary’s board to liquidate the care home.
Since the handover of care to Baker Tilly, resident Clare Heffernan is seeking support from her community, speaking up about the lack of consideration for the needs of residents by new Baker Tilly staff. New staff are not trained in disability care, do not know how to use the facilities related to disability care on site, have not been properly introduced to the residents that remain, and have little to no knowledge of the health and safety protocols in St. Marys.
Clare Heffernansaid:
*“*Since the Baker Tilly hand over everything has gotten very chaotic. 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. They have no experience in running a home and the senior manager seems to be at a loss, I had to tell her what to do the other day. One of the nurses admitted that she finds disability care challenging and whenever there’s an issue she is stressed on the phone to me. There is no structure – they are playing it by ear and dealing with issues as they crop up. We need stability, 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.”
Richard Boyd Barrett, People Before Profit TDsaid:
*“*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”