Government response too little, too late

The virulent political outrage generated by the Prime Time revelations serves to create the illusion that it was the first time politicians on either side of the Dáil were made aware of the horrific conditions in some of the nursing homes in this country.

That is patently not so.

Both the Government and opposition parties were more than aware of the fact that because the sector is largely unsupervised, there are maverick nursing home owners who are not just indifferent to the health of their patients, but are actually reckless in their treatment of them.

Before the bullying, appalling lack of hygiene and general lack of medical care at Leas Cross, there had been Rostrevor last year. There, discontinued drugs were administered, not enough nurses were on duty, fire safety precautions were inadequate, and an unlocked door had allowed patients to wander.

Leas Cross will not be the last one unless legislation is introduced, and passed, to establish a totally independent and transparent inspectorate for public and private nursing homes as previously demanded by Age Action Ireland.

The minister of state with responsibility for the elderly, Seán Power, expressed his shock by the treatment of those patients, but he is the man who presided over a system of inspections which he admits is “ridiculous”.

A situation was allowed to prevail where inspections, when they did occur, were heralded in advance by an advisory telephone call, which defeated the purpose of a meaningful inspection.

According to Action Age Ireland, only 78 of the 430 private nursing homes were inspected by the Health Service Executive last year and that was bad enough. But it is utterly deplorable that there is not a system of inspection for the 500 State nursing homes.

The junior minister has said the Government plans to bring in an independent inspectorate for nursing homes.

This belated move should be more than just a plan. The proposal is actually contained in the Health Information Quality Authority Bill being drafted.

There is no reason why it should not be fast-tracked so that it is introduced and enacted before the Dáil rises for its annual three months’ summer holidays.

The seriousness of this national scandal which occasioned such expressions of shock and outrage in the Dáil, demands that, if necessary, our national parliament defer that recess until the legislation is on the statute books.

But for the decision of a High Court judge, after a private screening of the programme, to deny the home owners an injunction to stop the broadcasting of the programme, viewers might never have witnessed the appalling deprivations and bullying that occurred at Leas Cross.

Neither would the politicians, who should be moved by what they saw, and by the public abhorrence it occasioned, to do something urgently to ensure it can never happen again.

It is difficult not to give a jaundiced view to Fine Gael’s intention to utilise Private Members’ Time in the Dáil to call for an independent inspectorate, which is hardly unique to them, and which, in any case, they could have mooted long before now.

But it is the Government which must bear the ultimate responsibility for permitting this unconscionable situation fester for years, which aided and abetted vulnerable elderly people being subjected to gratuitous suffering, indignities and threats, both physical and psychological.

Its decision to ask gardaí to investigate the Leas Cross is a belated response and totally inadequate in considering the wider problem of nursing homes.