HSA 'duped' by nursing home operators

Harry McGee, Political Editor

Mr Ahern told the Dáil that inspection staff from the Northern Area Health Board in Dublin "now believe they were duped" by the operators of the Leas Cross nursing home.

"The inspectorate had been dealing with the home and thought it was making progress," he said.

"They believed that what they were told on these issues was being followed through and the systematic abuses we saw the other night (in the PrimeTime documentary) were issues that they did not think happened."

Mr Ahern insisted that new legislation to widen the remit of the social services inspectorate to include private and public nursing homes would result in a more robust regime with extra staff and with more powers of invigilation. He admitted that the current set-up was inadequate.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny and Labour leader Pat Rabbitte demanded the Government introduce emergency legislation before the summer recess.

The Taoiseach maintained that the bill would not be published until the autumn. Meanwhile, more than 13,000 extra beds in private nursing homes have been created since 1997 as a result of tax reliefs.

Finance Minister Brian Cowen, who disclosed the figure in the Dáil, said no figures were available as to how much the reliefs have cost the Exchequer.

The scheme is one of a number of tax reliefs being reviewed by independent consultants on behalf of the department this year. New disclosure requirements will allow Revenue make its first assessment this year of how much tax has been foregone due to the scheme.

Recent figures show that there are 471 private nursing homes registered in the State, all of which must be inspected twice a year under the Health (Nursing Homes) Act 1990.

Of the 26,500 nursing home beds in the State, private beds easily outnumber those provided publicly. While the 1990 act requires private nursing homes to be inspected twice a year, paradoxically there are no provisions at all for the inspection of public nursing homes.

In the debate on the Finance Bill 2005 earlier this year, Mr Cowen defended the increase in number of private nursing beds compared to public ones. He also suggested that the 1990 act was sufficient in providing safeguards to residents, though he conceded there may be some problems. "The independent sector makes an important contribution," he said. "I do not suggest that the private sector offers a qualitatively superior service, but I am simply making the point that it offers what people want by providing beds.

In a report on care elderly people published in April 2003, the Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) said the policy of favouring private provision over public provision of long-stay care had never been articulated but had been pursued by the Government.