Recommendation IHRD-8: RQIA Compliance Review Powers
From Report of the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths, published 31 January 2018.
Recommendation
Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority ('RQIA') should review overall compliance and consideration should be given to granting it the power to prosecute in cases of serial non-compliance or serious and wilful deception.
In brief (written by this site)
The Inquiry recommended reviewing the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority's compliance and prosecution powers. In October 2022, the Department of Health (Northern Ireland) stated that initial work on the recommendation had been completed and transferred responsibility from its implementation programme to an internal policy area (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Oct 2022). The department's statement does not mention reviewing overall compliance or considering powers to prosecute serial non-compliance or serious and wilful deception (Department of Health (Northern Ireland), Oct 2022).
Sources
AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 1 Oct 2026. The record below is the sources' own words.
Government response
My Department accepts the recommendations of the O'Hara Report in their entirety.
Blanket government agreement does not establish acceptance or delivery by each addressee. Some response passages cover groups of recommendations.
Scope of the government response
The Minister of Health accepted all 96 recommendations together, in one sentence of a written statement to the Northern Ireland Assembly on 25 March 2021. That sentence is not a response to any one recommendation alone, and the Department of Health published no response to each recommendation. The Department's statements of 31 January, 2 February and 30 March 2018 contain no acceptance of the recommendations.
Delivery
Department of Health (Northern Ireland) says in progress (28 October 2022)
the 37 actions, where initial work has been completed, but where it is now appropriate to transfer responsibility for these recommendations from the IHRD implementation programme to the appropriate DoH policy area.
Site note: These words are from the Department of Health's document linked on this page. The Department's website asks automated tools not to fetch its document files directly, so the site cites the page that links the document.
Site note: The Department's October 2022 statement gives this passage once, for a group of 37 actions, and does not list the recommendations in the group. The site places this recommendation in it from the Department's per-action list of the same date, where Phase 2B holds 37 actions.
Source
Responsible bodies
Themes and tags
Who has spoken
- Department of Health NI
Response - Department of Health (Northern Ireland)
Delivery statement