Inspectors advised against registering Leas Cross

Health service inspectors who examined Leas Cross Nursing Home when it opened in 1998 recommended against it being granted official registration, a confidential internal report on the centre has found.

The report on the north Dublin home drawn up by consultant and former chief of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service Martin Hynes has found the inspectors also maintained that if it was registered it should have no more than 22 residents.

The report maintains, however, that management of the former Eastern Health Board decided to grant registration to the centre, despite the inspectors' reservations. Under the terms of the official registration the number of patients allowed to reside at Leas Cross was increased to 31. In later years these numbers exceeded 100.

The Hynes report on the background to the Leas Cross controversy, which was commissioned in recent months by the former Health Service Executive - Eastern Regional Health Authority, was circulated to top-level health service managers last week.

The document is one of four official reports into Leas Cross and related matters which have either been completed or are in preparation.

An earlier report by Mr Hynes on the decision to transfer a resident from a unit for disabled persons in north Dublin to Leas Cross is expected shortly.

This report is expected to raise questions over whether it was appropriate for St Michael's House - where the patient had been living - to facilitate the man's transfer to Leas Cross. The resident died two weeks after being admitted to the nursing home.

Mr Hynes has also been commissioned to prepare a report on how nursing homes in north Dublin were inspected by health authorities in the region.

The Health Service Executive has also commissioned a leading specialist in medicine for the elderly to examine the cases of patients who died after being transferred to Leas Cross.

The Irish Times revealed last month that a consultant psychiatrist at St Ita's Hospital in Portrane had written to the then Northern Area Health Board pointing out that seven elderly patients who had been transferred to Leas Cross had died within a short period of time.

The home closed at the beginning of the month following a decision by the HSE to remove public patients from the facility. Health service chiefs also advised the families of private patients in receipt of State subvention to consider removing their relatives.

The home had been at the centre of major controversy earlier this year when an undercover RTÉ Prime Time team revealed major lapses in standards of care for residents.