Consideration will be given to the establishment of an inquiry into the transfer of large numbers of psychiatric patients to two private nursing homes in north Dublin about which there were already concerns, the Minister of State with responsibility for the elderly, Seán Power, said.
He told the Oireachtas health committee yesterday he would discuss the possibility of holding an inquiry with his officials.
"There are serious questions to answer in relation to that," he said.
Psychiatric patients were transferred from St Ita's Hospital to the Leas Cross nursing home in Swords and to Bedford House nursing home in Balbriggan in 2003, even though both homes had problems, Fine Gael's Fergus O'Dowd said. The inspection reports on Bedford House were "appalling" for a number of years before the transfers and demanded an inquiry, he added.
He also told the committee it was "unbelievable" that two people involved at a high level in the nursing home inspection regime in the former Northern Area Health Board, which covered Leas Cross and Bedford, had now been taken on as private consultants by the HSE to advise on nursing home inspections.
He named the two as Jack Buckley and Michael Walsh and asked Mr Power how that could be allowed to happen.
Mr Power said the appointment of consultants by the HSE was entirely a matter for the HSE.
The Minister insisted he was not aware of difficulties at Leas Cross until a few days before the RTÉ Prime Time Investigates programme which exposed the abuse of residents in the home through footage recorded by an undercover reporter. He said he was so disturbed by what the programme showed, he immediately wrote to the Garda Commissioner.
Mr Power said it was quite obvious that the system of inspections at Leas Cross "failed, and failed badly".
Prof Des O'Neill, the consultant geriatrician whose review of deaths at Leas Cross was published recently, also appeared before the committee. He was troubled, he said, that the HSE had not accepted one of his recommendations, which stated that residents and their families in nursing homes that scored poorly in a tender process for heavy dependency care beds in 2005 should be informed because there was a high likelihood there were residents with a high dependency in all of these homes.
He said he understood there were five nursing homes that scored poorly for reasons other than their cost.
Mr O'Dowd asked the Minister for the names of these homes. Mr Power said he would endeavour to find out their names.
Prof O'Neill also told the committee he would be "gravely concerned" if there was any further shift in the balance between public and private nursing home care. At present most beds are in the private sector.
He added there was pressure to discharge older people from hospital but to think of sending somebody 30 miles away from their frail spouse was "a type of cruelty", he said.
And he expressed concern that the HSE said last June it had formed a team to devise a plan for the implementation of recommendations contained in reports carried out on Leas Cross but refused to divulge the names of those on the team. Mr Power promised to raise this with the HSE head Prof Brendan Drumm.