AS MANY as 100 back-office staff at a HSEfunded charity – including many working entirely from home – were vaccinated six weeks before vulnerable clients were offered a Covid jab, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The administration workers at Sunbeam House Services – a charity for intellectually disabled people – were vaccinated in mid-February.
A non-frontline whistleblower at Sunbeam said they were advised to misrepresent themselves on the HSE’s vaccine portal.
Just weeks earlier, at the end of January, three Sunbeam residents died in a virus outbreak that has since drawn criticism from healthcare regulator Hiqa over Covid-19 mitigation failures. Meanwhile, the charity’s 375 residential and daycare clients began being offered their vaccines just last week.
In all, Sunbeam homes in south Dublin and Wicklow are home to 121 intellectually disabled residents while another 50 are in supported living situations in the wider community.
Today’s revelation comes after the MoS revealed last week that childcare workers at a Limerick charity secretly misrepresented themselves as frontline healthcare staff to jump the vaccine queue.
This breach, which was criticised by HSE boss Paul Reid, is under review by Túsla and the HSE.
The MoS can also reveal that up to 30% of gardaà have had to quarantine at some stage during the pandemic.
Now a non-frontline whistleblower at Sunbeam has told the MoS that they too were told to misrepresent themselves on the vaccine portal.
‘I was told… the portal’s open, register and if you want to get done sooner rather than later, you have to click that you’re patient-facing,’ a back-office staff member who is working from home told the MoS.
The whistleblower said: ‘We were told to do that. They wanted them all done because we had a big outbreak where people died.
‘Everyone looked after themselves’
‘I’m relatively young and I have no issues and I have no problems and I really am so sorry. It’s horrible. It’s horrible to think these are the people we’re supposed to be looking after and everyone looked after themselves – including myself.’
Separately, a frontline worker at the charity also expressed disquiet at administration workers being vaccinated before some healthcare workers at Sunbeam.
‘It was annoying to hear of staff working from home being called ahead of some of us,’ they said.
‘Staff working from home being vaccinated before frontliners is not fair. Staff working from home and being vaccinated before the residents and vulnerable people with disabilities was definitely not fair.
‘Our service users only got vaccinated last week and it is so not right.’
Joe Lynch, Sunbeam’s CEO and a former Fianna Fáil candidate, confirmed that all 100 back-office staff had been vaccinated in February, though he said this was ‘in line with HSE guidelines’.
Mr Lynch said: ‘Most of the back-office staff are working from home in line with Government guidelines. Some are going in one day a week. Some are not going in any time at all, to be frank.
‘The vast majority of the senior management team are either in the office or out on the ground every day. I’ve been in the office every day.’
Mr Lynch said frontline staff had been instructed by an email he authorised to register as 2(a) workers on the vaccine portal.
He said office and administration staff were told to register as 2(g) workers.
Under HSE rules, 2(g) workers are defined as ‘healthcare workers without direct patient care but working in a healthcare facility with the potential to meet patients/service users’.
The guidelines say staff such as ‘laboratory staff, pharmacists, catering, household staff, general support staff, ICT and maintenance staff’ should be classed in this category.
However, in the case of Sunbeam those vaccinated include many admin staff who have been working from home throughout the pandemic with no potential to meet clients at all.
Mr Lynch said he had not been ‘standing over individuals observing which way they registered’.
The charity boss told the MoS: ‘I’d be disappointed, to say the least, if any manager was telling individuals to misrepresent themselves as frontline when they were actually back office. Yes, I would absolutely be disappointed with that. If I found out who said that, I would have to take disciplinary action because that’s not what they were instructed to do. Our responsibility to our clients and our responsibility to our staff was to tell them how to go about doing it and when to go about doing it. If somebody registered erroneously, there’s not a lot I can do about it.’
He added: ‘I can only ask the senior management team and if someone fesses up, well that’s fine I’ll have to do something about it. But if everybody says no I didn’t say that, unfortunately there’s not a lot I can do. I can’t do a plague on all our houses.’
Mr Lynch said Sunbeam had ‘advocated very, very, very strongly’ since last year to get clients vaccinated: ‘We were not looking for particularly special treatment for ourselves. But we did say it makes no sense to vaccinate the clients if you’re not going to vaccinate the frontline staff working with them.’
Mr Lynch confirmed that most Sunbeam staff – frontline and backroom staff working from home alike – were all vaccinated together within a couple of days of each other in mid-February.
‘I’m completely unaware about how the HSE system generated the calls to individuals,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how their algorithm works to select people to go forward for vaccinations.’
However, Mr Lynch expressed veiled frustration at the way Sunbeam’s clients – classed as 16 to 69-year-olds with underlying conditions – were not offered vaccinations until now.
‘The rollout, the way the HSE has done it,is the way the HSE has done it. I don’t have a comment on it whether it’s good, bad or indifferent,’ he said.
‘Maybe they did it because of the outbreak’
‘That frontline people and back-office people got vaccinated ahead of clients – maybe that was a judgement call by the HSE. Maybe it was because of the outbreak that they did it. I have no idea.’
With a budget of €32m – 95% funded by the HSE – Sunbeam has more than 500 staff with a team of 10 managers who shared €816,000 in salaries, according to the latest accounts from 2019.
In recent years, the charity has seen numerous management figures, CEOs and board members depart in the wake of a series of governance controversies.
As recently as last month, fresh revelations about care standards, governance and finances at Sunbeam in 2017 were detailed in an internal investigation outlined by the Irish Times.
Responding to these issues, the charity said they related to past matters that are ‘now behind us’.
But in January this year, 10 of 12 residents in one Sunbeam centre tested positive for Covid while a second outbreak in another centre was under way.
As a result, three clients died, two of whom had been in palliative care.
Another palliative care client who contracted Covid in these outbreaks also died ‘post-Covid’ in late February.
Following an investigation into these deaths, Hiqa said it was ‘not assured’ that Sunbeam ‘has efficient and effective Covid-19 testing systems within their organisation’.
Mr Lynch, who said he and other managers had been on stand-by to help with the January outbreaks – and could do so again now they were vaccinated.
‘Myself and senior managers would have been the next line of reserve.’
Speaking of the deaths he said: ‘It’s disappointing and very, very, very sad ‘I don’t know how HSE algorithim works’
for the individuals that work in the centre and for the people who live there with them, as well as their families – and myself personally – that anyone would die on my watch.’
But he attributed some of the blame to PPE supplies supplied by the HSE.
‘The Hiqa inspection has found that there were issues with PPE gear but the PPE gear was the PPE gear we were given by the HSE,’ Mr Lynch said.
In response to the latest revelations, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, who is also a TD for Wicklow where the charity is headquartered, said the events at Sunbeam should not have happened.
Mr Donnelly told the MoS: ‘I have been clear from the start of the Covid-19 vaccination programme that the allocation strategy must be followed. This is to ensure that those most at risk from serious outcomes of the disease are prioritised for vaccinations.
‘In the first months of the programme when we were limited by supply, these included frontline healthcare workers and those in longterm residential care. At times when it emerged that people have been vaccinated out of sequence I have been clear that these should not be happening and have reiterated this to the organisations involved, the HSE and hospital boards, that this should not be happening and I reiterate that again as the protocols are in place and very clear on this.’
Responding to queries from the MoS, the HSE said: ‘Every organisation offered the vaccine is expected to follow the sequencing guidance issued. It is expected that they would not include staff from cohorts not being called at that time.’
Speaking on Thursday, HSE chief Paul Reid said: ‘We have put levels of controls and processes in place and validation and verification, but ultimately you do rely on public trust in this, a willing public.
‘And I would draw distinctions, we’ve certainly seen some breaches of that trust in different manners,’ he said.
I am so sorry I did this. Cancer patients – 100 of the people we support – could have got vaccines before us
CAUGHT in the moment, it was easy to go along with the excitement of getting the vaccine – especially when your manager was the one telling you how to skip the queue a little.
Ultimately, as Health Service Executive (HSE) boss Paul Reid has now acknowledged, the system was based on trust – trust that was easily and widely abused.
‘If you want to get done sooner rather than later you have to click that you’re patient-facing,’ was how the manager put it.
That’s all there was to it. It sounded so innocuous, like a friend passing on a useful tip. All that was required was a slight bending of the truth and the click of a button.
Today, though, it feels different for some of those at Sunbeam House who were vaccinated ahead of their vulnerable clients as they continue working from home – as they have done since the beginning of the pandemic.
‘I’m so sorry I did this. I really am,’ one such employee told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
‘There are cancer patients and there are transplant ‘We’ve gone and taken their places’
patients and so many people who are waiting for it. I mean, 100 of the people that we support could have been vaccinated, you know.’
The sincerity of the administration worker is clear in her tortured voice as she speaks.
But there’s little she can do now – other than tell the truth about what happened.
‘Things can’t be fixed. We can’t be unvaccinated and give it to somebody else. But we were told it was okay. I just feel bad about it because the clients didn’t actually get done – they’re only getting done now – and I’m halfway to my second vaccination.’
The worker is in no doubt that what she and many of her colleagues did was morally wrong.
And she’s brave enough to admit the injustice she and others have done to others.
‘Unfortunately, our clients are very vulnerable people and we’ve gone and we’ve taken their places which is just terrible. I feel terrible. Healthy people have taken the places of peoplewho need it most and I’m not happy with myself now at the moment.
‘The physios had to be done and the occupational therapists had to be done. But us? The people in HR, the people doing accounts, senior managers, the CEO, his PA, the senior manager’s PAs – they didn’t all need to be done.’
Last week the MoS revealed how staff at Limerick’s Northside Family Resource Centre were instructed to keep their vaccinations secret to avoid potential sanctions.
Administration staff at Sunbeam were not told to keep their jabs secret in this fashion. But they didn’t advertise the matter either.
‘Nobody said don’t tell anyone but there was no publicity around it,’ the employee said.
And that, too, troubles her a little. Sometimes silence speaks volumes.
‘I mean, if you look on the Sunbeam Facebook page you will see where some of the clients got vaccinated last week and there was a big fanfare but there was nothing about when the staff got vaccinated,’ she said.
The affair has also caused tensions within Sunbeam itself as some frontline workers are still awaiting jabs.
These staff missed calls for vaccinations because their work often requires them to keep their phones turned off because some clients are disturbed by phones.
‘I was not happy to hear of ‘No fanfare when staff got vaccinated’
administration staff in HQ in Bray being administered their vaccine before me and other health care assistants who were working with the clients and residents,’ one such employee told the MoS.
‘Our service users only got vaccinated last week and it is so not right that all the office staff and managers were done.’
