Minister for Health Mary Harney has published proposed new guidelines on nursing-home standards.

A LEAS Cross-style inquiry into the substandard care exposed at a second private nursing home is still a possibility, the minister with responsibility for older people said.

WOULD the Leas Cross scandal have featured on RTE’s main news if the nursing home happened to be in Cork?

PARTS of the Leas Cross nursing home report make frightening reading. It has a chilling echo of another time in Ireland when life went on as normal outside the industrial schools that contained and facilitated the living nightmare of physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

A €30 MILLION patients watchdog has been jointly proposed by Fine Gael and Labour.

A NATIONWIDE team of elder abuse officers is to be in place by the end of the year to help safeguard against the kind of mistreatment patients at Leas Cross suffered.

There is a hollow ring to the belated promise by Health Minister Mary Harney that new legislation would set up a strict inspection regime for nursing homes so a Leas Cross scandal can never again happen.

New legislation will set up a strict inspection regime for nursing homes so a Leas Cross scandal will never happen again, Health Minster Mary Harney said today.

HEALTH Minister Mary Harney is expected to find out later this week if she can use Dáil privilege to publish the controversial report on the Leas Cross nursing home.

VULNERABLE pensioners are being put at risk of abuse because the Government refuses to “name and shame” nursing homes the HSE knows are sub-standard, Fine Gael claimed last night.

A MAJOR overhaul of the nursing home inspection process has been called for in a new report which revealed that over a third of homes in North County Dublin hadn’t been inspected in six months.

FOR a nation that likes to boast of its newfound status as one of Europe’s wealthiest economies, Ireland lags far behind other states on social issues.