Former Meath footballer and manager Colm O’Rourke is one of the directors of the company that owns a care centre that is the subject of a highly critical report by the Health Information and Equality Authority (HIQA).
The report, published yesterday, is related to an inspection carried out at Boyne Manor which is owned and managed by a company called Three Steps Limited. That company has an address in Navan and is entirely owned by Cúram Leanúnach Cuideachta Neamhtheoranta.
That company is owned by Dr. Cathal McAuliffe who is the other director besides O’Rourke, who was appointed as a director in April 2025. The former footballer is not listed as being a shareholder in the company.
Dr. McAuliffe is a specialist in clinical neuropsychology and was employed by the HSE for a year before establishing Three Steps in 2006.
Three Steps is the company to which payments are made and it received almost €5,000,000 from Tusla between 2023 and 2025.
O’Rourke wrote an article for the Sunday Independent in August where he decried what he believed was Sinn Féin’s vision of a state in which “the dole would be extra generous and everyone, whether you wanted to work or not, would get a free house…” Well, there are obviously some more entitled to taxpayer subventions than others.
The 2024 report refers to the “long-standing and excellent reputation with the Health Services Executive (“HSE”)… This reputation in the market place proves to be the key to the continuance of the relationship with the HSE and Tusla, and to the renewal of terms for the provision of care, and for the continued, ongoing concern of the company.”
Despite the generous support of the taxpayer, the last financial statement for Three Steps showed a loss of almost €500,000 after tax for 2024 but had 105 people working for it. A payment of €194,945 was included as “director’s emoluments.”
McAuliffe undertook in the report to ensure that the company would be in a position to continue by not calling in the debts owed to him. The financial statement notes that the company has returned to profitability and that this trend was expected to continue through 2025 into 2026.
The Three Steps debt of €413,000 is recorded in the 2024 financial statement for Cúram which reported net assets of more than €700,000. That debt is registered as “amounts owed to company undertakings.” The accounts are signed by McAuliffe and O’Rourke, dated August 29, 2025.
The HIQA inspection of Boyne Manor which provides residential care for children of both sexes was conducted on November 5, 2025. It was part of three separate unannounced visits to three of the centres owned by Three Steps on the same day. The others are Dunsany and one other at Boyne Manor. The company also owns and operates other centres.
The inspectors reported that the centre was non-compliant with the regulations governing 11 separate areas including staffing, training, management, the complaints procedure, quality and safety, risk management, protection against infection, fire precautions, and behavioural support.
The report refers to areas of the building which were “dirty and poorly maintained,” and ceilings which were “dirty with patches of dried food, mould, and faecal matter.” Cobwebs and spiders were observed in bedrooms, and “furniture items in living rooms were observed to be damaged with torn upholstery, broken legs and cracked table tops.” Overall, they found poor cleanliness leading to a risk of infection and that the building was not compliant with fire precautions.
Most importantly the report states that the actual psychological and educational care of the children was deficient. The inspector refers to “significant gaps in the following trainings: Lámh (a manual sign system used by children and adults with intellectual disability and communication needs in Ireland.); autism awareness; developmental trauma; self-harm; child sexual exploitation; human rights; infection prevention and control, and manual handling.”
“The inspectors were not assured based on their findings that the children using this service were in receipt of either a safe or quality service.”
Staffing issues were at the centre of most of the problems that were reported: “The management systems and processes in place to oversee the care and support being delivered to the young people in the centre were not effective.” This was attributed to changes in management structure including the resignation of the director of care, service manager and the persons in charge for each of the provider’s three designated centres within a short time frame of each other.”
The replacements were not up to the same standard and the HIQA report notes that “At the time of this inspection, the provider was heavily reliant on the use of agency personnel to meet basic minimum staffing requirements for the three children currently living in the centre, with over 200 shifts in a space of two months covered by contingency arrangements. This was not optimal to ensuring an effective continuity of staff support for the children and assurance that care delivery was consistent.”
In response to the issues raised Three Steps reported to HIQA that “A recruitment campaign across a national platform was reimplemented last week to ensure we have active advertisements running over the Christmas and New Year period.” That correlates with the company’s annual report which said that it had “reduced substantially its reliance on costly agency staff.”
Further inspections in March this year found that Boyne Manor was still not compliant with four of the regulatory requirements that were identified as deficient in November. Staffing was found to have improved but that agency staff were still employed but appeared to be of a higher standard and training.