A senior clinical psychologist who highlighted the death of an elderly patient at the Leas Cross nursing home said today he felt vindicated by the subsequent expert report.
Dr Mark Harrold (44), from Castle Terrace, Malahide, Dublin, is taking a case against St Michael's House (SMH) for constructive dismissal at the Employment Appeals Tribunal.
He said he was gratified that at the conclusion of the expert report, SMH had to take a substantial share of the responsibility for the care received by Peter McKenna.
The 60-year-old man, who had Down Syndrome, died from blood poisoning in October 2000, two weeks after being transferred to Leas Cross.
Dr Harrold said there had been a horrendous mistreatment and abuse of power by the SMH administrators when they went ahead with the transfer. "I feel Peter McKenna's case was a symptom of bullying. That family were treated appallingly by the organisation," he said.
Dr Harrold, who left SMH in April 2004 after working there for 13 years, claims he was subjected to bullying and harassment for raising the case of Peter McKenna and others.
"It is my belief that Peter's horrific death came about because this organisation has lost its way in what it was supposed to do," he wrote in a 2001 letter to the chief executive of SMH, Paul Ledwidge.
Dr Harrold later "went outside" SMH and wrote to then minister for health Micheál Martin in June 2003 to outline his concerns.
It led to an investigation by Martin Hynes, the former chief executive of the Irish Blood Transfusion Board, that initially found no grounds for Dr Harrold's complaints.
But following the RTÉ expose of conditions at the Leas Cross nursing home, Mr Hynes was asked to revisit the issue and came to a radically different conclusion last August.
Dr Harrold, who refused to participate in the first investigation because of the failure to interview the McKenna family, said he was gratified that Mr Hynes had done so in the second.
Mr Hynes found that there had been four previous complaints about Leas Cross from families of patients, contrary to what SMH had originally told him.
The case is expected to last five days.
PA