Leas Cross report - Government promise has hollow ring

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.

In a statement before the controversial report on that home was published, she said she believed that Leas Cross was an exception.

Yet, directly contradicting that belief, the independent report by Professor Des O’Neill concluded that it would be a major error to presume the deficits identified in Leas Cross represented an isolated incident.

Ms Harney admitted the country was playing “catch-up” in this most vulnerable sector because there had been historic underfunding and there had been a failure to establish a statutory inspection regime.

Because of the lack of those essential requirements, deficiencies could be replicated to a greater or lesser degree, as the report points out, and that it “represents the Government and the health system”.

Although the initial shock of hearing of the horrific conditions that pertained in Leas Cross nursing home had been somewhat absorbed through leaks, the report published yesterday served as a chilling reminder of how dire and inhumane those conditions actually were.

The report by Prof O’Neill into the home revealed a veritable litany of abusive practices and deficiencies at many levels, which were dismissed lightly by health board management, and complaints by families ignored.

When an RTÉ programme exposed just how defective standards were and how detrimental were conditions to residents, Leas Cross was closed down following the inordinate expression of public outrage.

Prof O’Neill was commissioned by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to conduct a review of 105 resident deaths at the home between 2002 and 2005, but his findings remained unpublished until yesterday because of legal concerns by the HSE.

He scathingly criticised the former Northern Area Health Board, the HSE and the Government which, the report said, failed to provide policy and legislation over a number of years to address the complex needs of the elderly.

Certainly, the alarm bells should have rung loud at least two years ago about Leas Cross when a number of reports highlighted serious deficiencies there. It culminated in a coroner’s court hearing how an elderly woman died from massive bed sores which left gaping holes to her bone after living there for a number of weeks. The trauma and heartbreak which families were forced to endure was horrific, and they were left without any input into this report, which was a documentary one.

It is incumbent that the Government acts as a matter of urgency so that new legislation expected before Christmas ensures that another Leas Cross can never again happen.