The Health Service Executive (HSE) has refused to release the findings of a report it commissioned last year into deaths at the Leas Cross nursing home in north Dublin. It has also refused to release the findings of an internal review of its nursing home inspection process.
Copies of the reports were sought by The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act last May and now, almost four months later, the HSE has made a decision on the request.
Outlining its reasons for refusing to release the documents, the HSE said it is currently considering the reports "and the HSE must be allowed to finalise its deliberations without undue interference in the decision-making process".
In addition, it claimed it would not provide a balanced view to release the reports in isolation and it was not in the public interest. In addition, the privacy of residents in the home had to be protected, said the HSE.
"It is clearly in the public interest that the HSE should be in a position to comprehensively examine all issues relating to private nursing home care, establish the facts, reach conclusions and make decisions, prior to opening any findings up for public debate," it said.
The review of 95 deaths at Leas Cross was carried out by Prof Des O'Neill, a consultant geriatrician at Tallaght hospital, and submitted to the HSE at the end of April. He was asked to review deaths at the home, or immediately after patients were transferred to hospital from the home, over a four-year period.
"The HSE is currently considering Prof O'Neill's review, along with a number of other examinations of systems and practices, relative to the provision of care in private nursing homes nationally," the HSE said in reply to the FOI request.
Last June, the HSE said it had formed a team to devise a plan for the implementation of recommendations contained in reports carried out on Leas Cross. "It is envisaged that this working group will conclude its task over the coming weeks," it said at the time.
Asked who was on the working group, the HSE press office said: "Membership of the internal working group includes expertise from services for older persons, risk management, general management, communications and consumer affairs."
When pressed for names, it refused to divulge them. It said: "It would be inappropriate to forward any further information relating to the membership of the working group as this is an internal HSE process."
Leas Cross closed in August 2005 after the HSE withdrew public patients from it. This followed a Prime Time Investigates TV programme on the treatmentof a number of patients there.