Critical Leas Cross report ignored

An independent report in the wake of the Leas Cross nursing home scandal found that health authorities ignored an original inspection…

An independent report in the wake of the Leas Cross nursing home scandal found that health authorities ignored an original inspection report in 1998 which recommended that the facility should not have been allowed to register as a nursing home.

It also found that two of the four nurses who had previously managed the home did not have adequate experience, as required by nursing home regulations.

The report last June by former head of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service Martin Hynes found that the original inspection report in April 1998 recommended against allowing the home to be registered.

It cited 14 reasons for this, including an engineer's report which found the double rooms were too small, and that it should be allowed to accommodate only 22 residents.

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Less than a month later an inspection report by another inspector recommended it should be allowed to register for 31 residents, without any conditions being attached to the registration.

Mr Hynes's report concluded that "in simple terms it should not have been registered in the manner in which it was, or indeed registered at all". The report states that between April 1998 and April 1999 there were 10 inspections, some of which found "serious" problems.

Despite this, an application for approval for an extra seven beds was allowed on the same day that inspectors found that they had been "misled in writing by the owner after a previous inspection which had identified a shortfall in staffing numbers".

Details of the report were raised in the Dáil yesterday by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny who also claimed that in August 2004, nine months before the RTÉ Prime Time documentary on the home, the health authorities were warned about conditions there.

The report, which was released under Freedom of Information to Fine Gael TD Fergus O'Dowd, also found that that when there was an application to increase the home by a further 73 beds, the health authorities gave no consideration to the implication of such a decision.

The report also found that two of the four nurses who held the position of matron did not meet the requirements in the regulations to have a minimum of three years relevant experience.