Sir, – Your reporter Simon Carswell told your readers of the dreadful circumstances surrounding the death of my husband Ultan Meehan on June 15th, just 10 weeks after the death of my son Adrian ("Covid-19: Tragedy of 'terrible dimensions' as woman loses husband and son", News, July 6th).
Both had been resident in a nursing home in Co Meath. While my husband was there because I could no longer look after him full time at home, due to his illness and dementia, my son was in the nursing home because no other “appropriate” place could be found for an adult with intellectual and physical disabilities. Both had contracted Covid-19 but only Adrian’s death can be attributed to it. Ultan, my husband, had cancer of the head, and the sickening state of his dreadfully neglected wounds when we eventually got him transferred to Connolly Hospital has been disturbing me ever since I was first told about it. Having just received his medical notes and viewed video footage of him at the time of his admission to hospital, I am more than sickened. I am, pure and simply, outraged.
My outrage is not just because of the condition of my husband on admission to hospital prior to his death. It is because despite reports to HIQA, the HSE and a letter to two Ministers for Health, I have had no formal contact from any of these three agencies of State suggesting that the disturbing circumstances surrounding my husband’s death will be independently reviewed or investigated.
I do not have the resources or, indeed, the heart to go down a legal route at this stage. I just know that what happened was terribly wrong and that it is nothing short of a scandal that there seems to be no means available to the State to review the treatment my husband received in a private nursing home.
I feel like a parcel being passed between HIQA, the Department of Health and the HSE, and my feelings of profound frustration are added to by my growing awareness that other people also have experiences to tell but no one in statutory agencies is willing to listen.
Talk of legal difficulties and giving additional powers to the Ombudsman to investigate clinical issues seems to be just that, talk.
The lack of robust oversight and clinical governance over all types of nursing homes and of proper supports to address concerns rapidly about quality and care need to be urgently addressed and the necessary resources and systems put in place.
Any such developments, however welcome they may be, will not, however, deal with the hard truth that I am now confronted with. That truth is that, despite all that happened to my beloved husband Ultan, I, and people like me, seem to have nowhere to go at an official level to get answers about serious issues raised about aspects of the social care system.
I will continue to rely on and give thanks for the staunch support of Sage Advocacy, and their local representative Maureen Finlay, and I acknowledge many public representatives have shown interest and concern. I also want to acknowledge the support of An Garda Síochána locally and of my local HSE social worker.
But after all that has happened I am left with one simple question. Can official Ireland not do better? – Yours, etc,
MARY
BARTLEY-MEEHAN,
Navan
Co Meath.