What does it say about a country when its people are forced to go to the High Court to seek an inquiry into the appalling mismanagement of state support for nursing homes during the Covid crisis?
The horrendous consequences for elderly people from the State’s inexplicable and unaccountable inactions are stark and harrowing. More than 2,000 older people, many who were denied the comfort of being with their loved ones at the time of their passing, died with Covid in nursing homes.
The State, under the guidance of both then Minister Simon Harris and now Stephen Donnelly, has not faced up to its role in this heartbreaking outcome and its absolute failure to protect those most vulnerable to the virus.
Despite the litany of errors and the succession of inexplicable decisions which endangered or ignored frail older people and led to the shocking death rates in nursing homes, the State has refused to hold a public investigation. It’s far easier to continue to harangue the people with doom-laden warnings and to blame young people for the cause of all Covid ills, than it is to examine the State’s own role in leaving nursing homes last on the list for support and attention when they should have been first.
Now, a High Court challenge has been launched to try to force the State to come clean. It’s reported that the “action has been brought on behalf of 19 individuals who are challenging a decision by the Minister for Health on 28 June last not to establish a formal investigation into the circumstances of coronavirus-related deaths in homes in the State.”
Most of the applicants involved had a family member who is recorded as having died from Covid-19 while in a nursing home. I can only imagine how their distress, sorrow and heartbreak was augmented by the State’s intransigence to face up to their responsibilities.
They claim that the Irish Constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights uphold the right to an investigation, which they say, would “establish the facts, allow learning from events, provide accountability, help rebuild confidence in the sector and prevent a recurrence”. They argue the refusal by the State – which was formally indicated to the applicant’s solicitors last month – to hold such an inquiry is “contrary to the public interest, is unfair, unreasonable and disproportionate”.
How could any fair-minded person disagree with that? It is disgraceful that the government thinks it can simply wash its hands of this scandal. Because what happened in the nursing homes – and to frail, vulnerable, elderly people – is an absolute scandal, only compounded by the refusal of the authorities to take responsibility.
It’s worth revisiting some of what’s known about those events in 2020 – and what’s been revealed since.
As I have written previously, at the beginning of March 2020, care homes for older people across the country moved quickly to restrict visitors when it became obvious Covid-19 was a real threat, and by March 6th, their representative body, Nursing Homes Ireland, had banned all non-essential visiting
He added that he had “also learned a pot of money was offered to nursing homes at this time. How much was offered to get older people out of hospitals? Tóibín asked.
But answers to these and to other pressing questions have not been forthcoming. And the media, with some few exceptions, seem to be too occupied taking cash from the government to adequately investigate this appalling dereliction of duty or to hold decision makers to account.
We are all disgraced by the State’s refusal to examine and learn from its own shocking failures. Some of the most vulnerable people in our country paid for the State’s failures with their lives. At the very least, their families need to know it will not happen again.