The HSE’s Confidential Recipient, Leigh Gath, said some people had complained they were threatened with having equipment or supports removed or reduced if they insisted in having a say about the care provided to them by the health services.

The placing of people with an intellectual disability in psychiatric care, sometimes for years even though they do not have a mental illness, features heavily in the complaints made last year to the health service’s confidential recipient.

An investigation is under way into why a HSE-funded care home failed to provide timely medical intervention to a disabled person who is now very ill — despite requests from the person’s mother to intervene on her adult child’s behalf.

A long-delayed state inquiry into the ‘Grace’ foster abuse scandal is set to begin within weeks after an independent report into the controversy was finally published last night.

The HSE has confirmed 10 staff and one agency worker at a disability service run by the Daughters of Charity in Tipperary have been taken off duty following complaints over "inappropriate" care practices.

A woman who knows care services “from the inside out” has agreed to be the HSE’s confidential recipient of abuse claims.

They were scared, really scared, but people with disabilities showed their fighting spirit outside Government Buildings yesterday.

Leigh Gath isn’t looking for an easy life — just a bit of fair play.