Not long after entering the care of the Emeis-owned Belmont House nursing home in south Dublin, 78-year-old Ann Walshe had been left in diarrhoea and vomit-stained bed sheets for 48 hours.
Her daughter Michelle Walshe, who recalled the experience, said her mother “didn’t understand the gravity of the situation” because she was so unwell and dehydrated.
“You wouldn’t leave a dog like that,” she said.
It is yet another allegation against the French nursing home group, the focus of an RTÉ Investigates programme last week, and now the subject of a wide-scale review of its 27 facilities.
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The programme focused on conditions endured by residents at its facilities at Beneavin Manor in Glasnevin, Dublin, and The Residence, Portlaoise. The company has since issued “a genuine and open apology” to those affected.
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Ms Walshe brought her mother, who has for years been living with dementia and bipolar disorder, to Belmont House in early December 2024. She said she was “scarred” by the admission process on her mother’s first day when it seemed nobody was prepared for her arrival.
She said her mother was asked by a nurse hours after entering the facility “if she wanted to be resuscitated when it came to end-of-life care”. Towels and toilet rolls in her room were left unreplaced when she had norovirus, Ms Walshe also claimed.
While discussing incontinence pads, staff were so dismissive, she alleged, that her mother became upset and started to cry.
“Dignity? I haven’t encountered it yet within the Belmont walls – talking about her in front of her as if she’s not there,” Ms Walshe wrote in an email to the care home seen by The Irish Times.
She said she brought her allegations to the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa), the monitoring body, in February this year, but was dissatisfied with its response, telling her, she said, to raise the concerns directly with the care home or with the ombudsman.
“I can’t report the horrors, I can’t protect my mum,” she said. “There’s no proper procedure in place.”
A spokesperson for Hiqa said such information was routinely logged, brought to the attention of an inspector and used to inform regulatory oversight. In 2024, it received more than 1,000 such submissions relating to nursing homes.
Concerned parties are first encouraged to raise complaints with the service provider, which is required to have a complaints policy in place.
Another woman whose 90-year-old father has been a resident of Beneavin Manor in Glasnevin since August 2023 alleged the treatment he had received “amounts to institutional abuse”.
After he suffered a series of falls in quick succession, she said that in September 2023 she saw him “hanging off the door” to his room “shouting for help”, while nurses ignored his pleas.
On a separate occasion this year, the woman, who requested anonymity, alleged she had found her father “head to toe covered in his own stale faeces”, screaming for help after attempting to clean himself.
After asking for a meeting with senior management, a nurse told her sister that such a scene “was normal for dementia”, the woman claimed.
However, since the airing of the RTÉ Investigates programme last week, she had “seen a huge difference, a huge improvement” in the quality of care.
“It’s sad to say that this is what it took, but will it last? My fear is for what’s next.”
Minister of State with Responsibility for Older People, Kieran O’Donnell, has initiated a review of the 27 Emeis-owned nursing homes in the State, while additional safeguarding teams are also being put in place.
Emeis has been contacted for comment.
