Brian O’Flynn

I investigated working time breaches in Ireland’s Health Service
for the Medical Independent.

Since 2013, Ireland’s Health Service Executive has fined individual hospitals when they fail to abide by rules around doctor working hours. I discovered through FOI requests that the HSE stopped issuing fines to hospitals without consulting the doctor’s union. That story is here.

I also discovered that committees charged with monitoring working hours in hospitals failed to reconvene when they were instructed to. That story is here.

A chart I produced in R for my investigation into doctor working hours

I exposed inequality in a scholarship program at Trinity College Dublin
for The Ditch.

I FOIed Trinity College to obtain data on its scholarship recipients. Trinity’s scholarship is thought to be one of the most valuable in Europe, and awards years of free accommodation, fees, and food to winners. I then enriched the data by writing a scraper in R, and visualised my results. My analysis exposed that disadvantaged students were underrepresented in the program.

A chart I produced in R for my investigation into Trinity’s scholarship program.

I investigated the closure of a gay men's sexual health clinic in Dublin
for VICE World News.

When a gay men's clinic closed for a year during the pandemic, leaving 10,000 users without sexual health services, the HSE claimed it was due to routine staff redeployment. I knew this didn't add up, so I interviewed activists and former nurses at the clinic to find out the real reasons behind the scandal. My investigation exposed that the clinic's extended closure was due to its reliance on agency staff, and its failure to award permanent contracts to long-time staff, a problem which began with austerity budgeting.