Gardaí investigating the death of Evelyn Joel (58) six days after she was admitted to hospital suffering from severe malnutrition yesterday visited the house she had shared with her daughter in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, to begin a forensic examination.
Gardaí will shortly interview Mrs Joel's daughter, Eleanor. The Health Service Executive said it would "comprehensively review" its service provision to her.
Four gardaí yesterday knocked on the door of the two-storey semi-detached house at 2pm and were immediately admitted.
They spent an hour photographing an upstairs bedroom where Mrs Joel, who had been bedridden with arthritis and multiple sclerosis, spent her final months with her daughter, her daughter's partner and the couple's two children. Gardaí took several items from the house.
A garda said the woman had been found "in a bed in absolutely horrendous circumstances" after a doctor was called on January 1st. She is understood to have been found in her own excrement, with maggots on her body. She died in hospital last Saturday.
A friend said her weight had dropped to under 4 stone and gardaí are examining the possibility that she was a victim of neglect.
Separately, the HSE will make its own inquiry. Its investigation team will include a medical consultant, a former deputy health board chief executive and a health care professional with a background in public health nursing and community service. Terms of reference for the inquiry and members of the team are being finalised.
Sources in Enniscorthy said yesterday Mrs Joel had not visited her GP for six months. It is not clear at this stage if she was known to public health nursing staff. Many neighbours claimed they never knew she was living on their estate.
The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Ireland said Mrs Joel was not a member and was not known to it.
"She hadn't contacted the society. If she had she would have been assigned a case worker that could visit her," a spokeswoman said.
Neighbours huddled together in groups yesterday talking about what had happened.
Reporters who knocked on the door of No 37 Cluain Dara, where Mrs Joel had been living, were unable to speak to Eleanor Joel.
A statement issued by a brother and sister of the dead woman, Tom and Maureen Connolly, said it had been several months since they saw their sister but claimed this was through no fault of their own.
They said they had made efforts "to speak with their sister, to see their sister, to visit their sister but all requests for information on their sister and all requests to visit her were declined by the victim's daughter". They said they were "totally unaware of the circumstances under which their sister suffered" and were very saddened and upset by what had happened.
State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy conducted a postmortem on Mrs Joel's remains earlier this week but the results have not been released.