Distress at report's 'lack of closure'

FAMILY RESPONSE:FAMILIES OF deceased Leas Cross residents said there was "disappointment, anguish, lack of closure and distress" over the way the commission of investigation's report was released yesterday.

Tony Mullins of the Leas Cross Deaths Relatives Action Group said the group was not invited to the launch of the report and it “deplored” its release on the same day as the “Bord Snip Nua” report.

“Of course there is a perfectly rational, logical explanation why it couldn’t be done in any other way but it is a disgrace,” he said. More than €2 million had been spent on the report, he added. “There are very serious issues in the report and it is being buried under what is a necessary and essential national debate . . . it’s a good day to bury bad news.”

He said he hoped the Irish public would realise the deep cynicism behind this behaviour.

Mr Mullins said the relatives’ group was instrumental in the creation of the commission of investigation yet it was only informed two days ago that the report was being released yesterday.

“Some of us were overseas and had to come back urgently,” he said. “The report has been on the Minister’s [Ms Harney’s] desk, I understand, since June 10th, which is five weeks and I also understand that the HSE has had access to all the report details dealing with the HSE, which is pretty much all the report, for a number of months. It is extraordinary that the victims’ families of this incident do not get adequate time to consider the report.”

The group, which involves about 28 families, carried photographs of their deceased relatives to the media briefing yesterday.

“I can say on behalf of the families here that the majority of the families have not recovered from the events of Leas Cross,” Mr Mullins said.

The events were “nothing less than a national disgrace,” and a “national tragedy”, he said.

“The report clearly shows that [former Leas Cross owner] Mr John Aherne was in a position to behave as he saw fit, including initially operating the nursing home without a licence to have a nursing home and without a fire certificate.” Registration of the home was later granted and backdated.

The HSE, and formerly the health boards, “failed completely” to enforce the findings of several reports that highlighted the home’s shortcomings, Mr Mullins said. “The Minister is now saying there is a new inspection regime and everything will be hunky dory. The failure in Leas Cross was not that of inspection. The failure was that of enforcement.”

Mr Mullins questioned how the HSE could provide €7.27 million to Leas Cross over a seven-year period while there was “total failure” to regulate the home. There was a “complete lack of accountability” within the HSE.

He said the commission could not find anyone in the HSE who would accept responsibility for the decision to transfer 23 patients from St Ita’s in Portrane to Leas Cross. The report found that the significant increase in admissions in late 2003 and early 2004 coincided with a decline in care standards.

In a quick reading of the report, Mr Mullins had not seen any sign of contrition from anyone in the HSE for the events at Leas Cross.

Mr Mullins’s late mother Kitty was a former resident and her family had major concerns about her care.

Also at the meeting, Patrick Crowley from Cork told how he discharged himself from Leas Cross after spending two nights there in 2004. “The room I had was nice, but it was the atmosphere . . . that was awful.” He said he could hear residents screaming and shouting “leave me alone” in a ward and he remembered a staff member who continuously flicked at an elderly resident’s ear to annoy her.

Tony Walsh brought a picture of his father Richard, whose health deteriorated rapidly at Leas Cross. He died shortly after leaving the home. Mary Smith told how she and her husband Terry were initially delighted when a bed was offered to his mother Teresa, who had dementia. However, a number of incidents gave cause for concern, and when she was admitted to Beaumont hospital, she was dehydrated and extremely underweight. “We couldn’t believe it,” she said.