Health Service 'lied to families of nursing home victims'

Families of patients who died at Leas Cross nursing home were lied to by the Health Service Executive about problems at the facility, a new victims’ group claimed today.

The north Co Dublin home was shut down in August last year after an RTE undercover investigation revealed sub-standard care and management deficiencies.

A HSE-commissioned report published this month catalogued a litany of bad practice culminating in a finding of institutional abuse.

The Leas Cross Death Relatives Action Group, formed by 11 family representatives, today accused the HSE of lying to relatives who made complaints about care at the home.

It also claimed it failed to act on formal complaints and tried to prevent communication between aggrieved families.

“The HSE lied on occasion to family members on the existence of serious problems at Leas Cross, said group spokesman Tony Mullins, whose 82-year-old mother Kitty died at the facility in February 2004.

Mr Mullins told a news conference how his mother told him that care workers didn’t give her medication for Alzheimer’s. When he confronted them, they claimed she didn’t remember getting it because of her condition.

He claimed an average of one resident died every day during the first quarter of 2005.

He added: “The HSE bankrolled Leas Cross by up to two million euro a year. It could have shut it down at any time by shutting down the finance. But it never withdrew funding or stopped transferring patients there.

“There is overwhelming evidence that Leas Cross consistently and flagrantly breached Government regulations in almost all areas from its establishment in 1998 to its closure in 2005.”

The relatives’ group wants up to a dozen outstanding questions answered such as who originally financed the establishment of Leas Cross in 1998, how much funding did it receive from the HSE since then and was there was any backing of its operation from political parties.

Members of the group were offered consultation and counselling by the HSE last week.

But Mr Mullins said today: “We don’t want counselling three years after the event. We want the truth and justice.”

Mr Mullins also claimed the relative of a patient at Bedford House nursing home near Balbriggan, Co Dublin told him before today’s meeting she made a complaint about the facility in 2003 but received no written response from the HSE.

New admissions to the home were suspended by the HSE last week.

“The complaint was about nursing care and a carbon copy of complaints made to Leas Cross,” Mr Mullins added.

The O’Neill Report commissioned by the HSE has been forwarded to the Garda, the Irish Medical Council and the Nursing Board.

Group members said they were willing to co-operate with any Garda inquiries into Leas Cross.

The group appealed to other victims’ families to get in contact.