While the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) is at the centre of the top-ups controversy, it is just one of 13 voluntary hospitals and agencies paying bosses extra salaries from “privately funded” sources.

All health bodies giving top-ups to senior officials will be hauled before the head of the HSE between now and Christmas to explain how they will “immediately” end the ‘second salaries’ culture.

Only seven hospitals and health agencies comply with public sector pay rules, health chiefs have revealed today.

Reductions in residential and respite care means people with intellectual disabilities are paying more than any other citizen for the economic crisis, a carer father has said.

Sensory stories for intellectually disabled get a wider audience, Helen O’Callaghan reports.

People with disabilities are being ignored and isolated, and bear an unfair brunt of economic cutbacks, campaigners claimed today.

A nurse who stole over €8,500 from her 77-year-old employer has been sentenced to three years.

The father of a child with special needs has claimed his young daughter was “manhandled” by gardaí at Leinster House as they attempted to deliver a letter of appeal to Enda Kenny over education needs.

A €4m budget cut to the largest service provider for people with disabilities in the country has been branded a national scandal.

My worst habit is trying to fit too much into one day.

FIVE special needs children find themselves outside the education system due to a funding dispute between a Dublin school and the Department of Education.

FUNDING of €50 million announced this week by the HSE for one of the country’s biggest providers of disability services would have to be at least doubled to cater for all who need the facility, say bosses.

DARRAGH Moore suffers from multiple sclerosis.

SOME of the country’s most vulnerable children may be left without vital healthcare and support services as a result of HSE budget cutbacks.

AN Employment Appeals Tribunal into alleged bullying at one of the country’s largest disability agencies was scrapped yesterday after it emerged one of the Tribunal panel is related to a witness.

THE family of a former Leas Cross patient have rejected the terms of reference of an inquiry into his death.

THE former manager of an employment centre at one of the State’s largest disability agencies has told an Employment Appeals Tribunal that she was subjected to an 18-month long campaign of bullying.

ONE of the country’s largest providers of services to people with learning disabilities is facing a second bullying controversy in just 12 months.

MANAGEMENT at St Michael’s House - who deny a senior clinical psychologist’s claim he was bullied out of his job - had been asked for a training course on bullying, the Employment Appeals Tribunal heard yesterday.

FORMER Labour Party strategist Fergus Finlay yesterday paid glowing tribute to senior clinical psychologist Dr Mark Harrold who alleges being bullied out of his job at St Michael’s House.

AFTER a senior clinical psychologist wrote to the Minister for Health, his employers levelled eight allegations against him, the Employment Appeals Tribunal heard yesterday.

THE deputy head of a service provider for people with learning disabilities strongly denied yesterday that a culture of bullying existed there.

A senior clinical psychologist who highlighted the death of an elderly patient at the Leas Cross nursing home said today he felt vindicated by the subsequent expert report.

Generous passengers travelling through Dublin Airport have given 19 Irish charities a Christmas present worth thousands of euro.

A controversial nursing home where a man with Down’s Syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease was transferred shortly before he died was clearly not capable of caring for him, a report revealed today.

A psychologist said today he was targeted maliciously after he raised concerns about the transfer of a patient who later died at the Leas Cross Nursing Home in Dublin.

A Longford teenager who beat a then 13-year-old girl "to pulp" and viciously raped her after she blacked out from his attempts to strangle her has been given nine years detention.

IT does not surprise me that a report compiled by psychologists at St Michael’s House ‘discovered’ a very worrying degree of sexual abuse of intellectually disabled people (Irish Examiner, July 19).

GOVERNMENT cutbacks hit a new low yesterday as it emerged that services and money for the mentally handicapped will be severely cut next year.

IF Rosie Byrne’s prospects were glum last week, they’re even bleaker now.