Inquiry into Leas Cross nursing home cost €2.1m

THE INQUIRY into the treatment of residents at the Dublin Leas Cross nursing home has cost €2.1 million, Minister for Health Mary Harney revealed in the Dáil last night.

“Inquiries are not inexpensive,” she said.

Ms Harney also said she would consider demands for a public inquiry into the handling of complaints against the former Drogheda surgeon Michael Shine.

He was struck off the Medical Register last November by the Medical Council, which had received 29 complaints against him for inappropriate behaviour against young men and boys. It pursued nine and found him guilty in three cases.

Ms Harney that she would have to discuss the matter with the Minister for Justice, the Attorney General and also consult her Cabinet colleagues.

“I would not be in a position to initiate an inquiry unless I felt there were issues which would arise where we could further learn with a view to implementing change,” she added.

Ms Harney said a former minister for health Michael Noonan had decided to implement the recommendations of a report on the matter but felt no inquiry was warranted.

She had accepted that judgment.

The Minister was replying to a Fine Gael-Labour private members’ motion calling for the setting up of a commission of investigation into the case.

Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly said that Shine had been struck off the medical register as a result of a medical council fitness to practise committee inquiry which found him guilty of professional misconduct.

Dr Reilly said that he was concerned about the ambivalent nature and the mixed messages coming from the Government on the matter.

“Victims are entitled to a full hearing before a commission of inquiry,” he added.

“Some have waited up to 30 years for this. Some, indeed, have passed away.”

Dr Reilly said that there was a need for transparency, accountability and fairness. “I think if we had transparency around Mr Shine and his activities . . . the manner in which the hospital dealt with the complaints . . . both the medical board and the management . . . and how the health board, now the HSE, dealt with them . . . how the gardaí and the DPP dealt with them . . . we would not be having this motion before us tonight,” he added.

Labour spokeswoman on health Jan O’Sullivan said that the case of Michael Shine was about one man in one institution, but more than 100 people had come forward and said they were victims.

“They are entitled to have the truth about what happened to them fully revealed,” she added.

“They are entitled to whatever interventions can help them to take back their lives.”

Ms O'Sullivan said that anyone who saw the RTÉ Prime Time Investigatesprogramme, or who listened to the convincing testament of Bernadette Sullivan, the nurse who blew the whistle and who had heroically persisted in bringing the story to justice, would know that the limited inquiry and flawed court proceedings that had taken place had been completely inadequate.

Sinn Féin Dáil leader Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said that when the House had recently debated the Ryan report, it was rightly stated that the terrible crimes against children were compounded by the conspiracy to deny and to conceal and to intimidate those who dared to speak up.“It was a conspiracy of the powerful against the powerless,” he added.

The debate on the motion resumes tonight.