It Occurs To Me : Heartbreaking scenes in nursing homes

Pope Francis said : “The quality of a society...is also judged by how it treats elderly people.” 

How we treat the elderly says much of us as a nation…and I’m not impressed. In my 25 years writing this column, I’ve had occasion to fly a flag for the previous generation who - in my opinion - have been elbowed aside in the rush for modernity. If they have a query regarding banking or telephones, how frustrating is it to not have a lucid human being at the end of a phone to listen to their particular problem. 

A few years ago, an elderly lady in a bank was having problems at one of their infernal machines, and a lovely bank official came from behind the counter to assist her. Suddenly, the manager emerged and hissed: “What are you doing? That is not your job?” Other customers were shocked but that in many instances is what we are dealing with. If I was within earshot, and it was my mother who needed help, he would have received an ‘overdraft’ he would never forget!

They deserve maximum respect and dignity in their lives, and especially towards the end of their days should they find themselves in certain nursing homes. Like many of you I was angered, shocked and saddened by the RTÉ Investigates programme into two homes in particular. Kilcar’s own Aoife Hegarty has fronted some amazing programmes over the years but last Wednesday’s broadcast knocked me for six.

The old man in a wheelchair who begged for help but who was not taken to the toilet for some 25 minutes. Another hauled and pushed roughly down a corridor by his waistband: the very frail female resident, who has dementia, growing increasingly agitated and calling out for help. When none arrived, she repeatedly tried to get out of bed and although her sensor mat activated a bell, it was left to ring for several minutes without response.

“Don’t leave me now. Oh my God,” she begs. “That yoke’s not working… I was ringing and ringing and ringing.”

"If the alarm goes off, we have to respond in a quick fashion – if you don’t, it is just window dressing," said Consultant Geriatrician Professor Rónán Collins. He added: "Clearly if people are suffering because they want to go to the toilet and they’re faced with the choice of being incontinent in the chair due to staffing levels, that is very, very poor care of people.” 

One male resident went without proper bedding due to a shortage of clean sheets — leaving carers to stick together incontinence pads to create a makeshift bedsheet. "People don’t understand the impact it has for a person to be incontinent," Professor Collins explained. 

A scene from RTÉ Investigates Inside Ireland's Nursing Homes PHOTO: RTÉ INVESTIGATES 

“It reduces a person’s confidence, their wellbeing, their psychological sense of themselves and a spiralling into a loss of function. I can’t say any more about how much this goes against the grain of every gerontological principle I would hold dear.”

Whistleblower nurse Clare Doyle told Aoife: “I was concerned because of what appeared to me to be systemic practices that were being adopted by Orpea that was creating an environment that was detrimental to the quality of care. 

“Practices like rapid admissions of residents, healthcare assistants were being moved from on the floor to providing kitchen duties, staff numbers not increasing either in relation to more residents coming in. I was very shocked because these healthcare assistants were experienced. These are our parents, our aunts, our uncles. As a professional, I was shocked, I was angry. As a human being I was heartbroken.” 

So was I.

                                 Kicking the can down the road

I listened to  Kieran O’Donnell, Minister of State at the department with responsibility for older people on Claire Byrne’s radio programme, and to put it bluntly, he didn’t exactly inspire confidence. It was one of those ‘rabbit in the headlights’ conversations…all bluster and caught on the hop responses.  has asked the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) to start a review of all nursing homes operated by the group in the wake of Wednesday’s RTÉ Investigates programme. 

Much more impressive with Claire Byrne was Liam Doran, former general secretary of the INMO. Liam said he didn’t believe that 87% of nursing homes are fully compliant, as claimed by O'Donnell earlier in the programme, and that Ireland has a flawed model that leans into the private sector, - the primary motivation for the private sector being profit.

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“And I would say back to the minister, gently but forcibly, compliant with what minister? What exactly do we have in place, underpinned by legislation, with regard to the care of older people that ensures that care is being met?” 

Doran warned that without underpinning policies over elder care with legislation, “the type of thing we saw last night will again occur, as it did 20 years ago in Leas Cross”. It was the mention of Leas Cross that made me trawl through my notes of 2005. It’s unbelievable that twenty years ago, the Leas Cross scandal erupted when the nursing home closed several weeks after a 2005 Prime Time television report revealed sub-standard living conditions there. 

A report by Professor Des O’Neill reviewed deaths at the home between 2002 and 2005, finding that care was deficient and it was consistent with a finding of institutional abuse. 

As the Independent reminds us: “Many of the frail and elderly residents showed symptoms of grave neglect. Some had bed sores and their bodies betrayed signs of serious dehydration and malnutrition. They had not been well cared for in the last days or even months of their lives. Following a public outcry, the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) was set up in May 2007.” 

O’Donnell told Claire Byrne that he had asked Hiqa to start a review of all nursing homes operated by the Orpea/Emeis group, but what the hell happened after 2005? Can we be confident? After all, the then Health Minister Mary Harney, said: “I can’t guarantee this won’t happen again, but I can guarantee that it would be picked up quickly.” No, it wasn’t! 

It took yet another investigation.  

You may see our ministers smiling in Croke Park or the Aviva, but guess what their favourite sport is? Kicking the can down the road. All 2-pointers!

 As Liam Doran said:“I think sadness, just sadness at looking at people who have served this country, have worked for this country and have shown fortitude, much more than the modern generation and that’s how we treat them. Shame, shame on all of us.”

                  Extraordinary hypocrisy in The White House

Last week, Trump accused Elon Musk of being “disrespectful to the office of the president”.

“I think it’s a very bad thing, because he’s very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the president,” he said.

My God, that’s rich coming from someone who has absolutely disrespected and denigrated the said office. This is the same guy who sat with Mike Tyson at a recent UFC fight and who in 1992 - after Tyson was convicted of rape - called the verdict a “travesty” in an interview with Howard Stern and said it was actually Tyson who was the subject of physical advances from women!

Then, the increasingly bewildered The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt (not enough between her two ears that would fill a pipe!) accused California’s Democratic leaders of having “completely abdicated their responsibility to protect their citizens”.

“The Trump Administration has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behavior and violence, especially when that violence is aimed at law enforcement officers trying to do their jobs,” she said in a statement, announcing that Trump had signed a memo late Saturday night ordering the national guard deployment. The memo asserts that the demonstrations impeded “execution of laws” and therefore “constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States”.

Jesu wept! Remember the police officers injured and killed in the January 6, 2021  attack on Capitol Hill? Trump didn’t send in the National Guard then and subsequently pardoned the assailants. I despair!