Varadkar backs use of undercover abuse investigations

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has backed the use of undercover investigations to identify possible abuse of patients in care units.

He said the Áras Attracta facility in Co Mayo, which is at the centre of controversy over the treatment of residents, had been inspected by the health and safety watchdog Hiqa.

He said recommendations made by Hiqa on the unit had been implemented.

“So obviously the existing systems are not good enough. It is sad that we have to do it, but the only way to satisfy ourselves that this is not happening in other places is to have our own undercover inspections.”

The Minister said that some staff groups may not like this idea but he thought “it has to be done”.

Responsibility for the mistreatment of residents at a Co Mayo home for people with intellectual disabilities goes "right up" to the top of the Health Service Executive, according to a special needs group.

"I don't think the HSE at higher levels can abdicate responsibility and just put full blame on those staff. The buck does not stop with the people on the ground," says Lorraine Dempsey of the Special Needs Parents Association, who has viewed the footage of an RTÉ documentary on Áras Attracta to be aired tonight.

"People with disabilities in these institutional settings have been hidden. For decades, this is one of these historic legacies which is a scandal that Ireland yet again is choosing to just keep down."

The programme, to be broadcast on Prime Time tonight, shows scenes of residents at the Swinford home being slapped, force-fed, roughly handled and abused.

Nine staff have been suspended over the allegations, which are being investigated by gardaí.

Other experts contributing to the programme unequivocally describe the secretly filmed scenes from the home as abuse.

"I've seen footage like this before but to be frank, it's from Eastern Europe, not Ireland and I feel ashamed about this," says Prof Gerard Quinn, director of the centre for disability law in NUI Galway.

“It’s a relationship of threats and physical force. . . What a horrible environment. It’s as if the person’s being treated as invisible, as a non-person and when she tries to become visible is pushed back. It’s very, very troubling footage.”

Prof Quinn describes footage of a resident being slapped as “mind-boggling in this day and age.

"I am absolutely stuck for words," says Prof Owen Barr, head of the school of nursing, University of Ulster.

“It’s entirely unacceptable that individual members of staff behave in this way, equally unacceptable that an organisation could have a facility that behaves like this, and them not know about it.”

In the programme, relatives of the three women express their shock and disbelief that such treatment could be meted out to their own “flesh and blood”.