A nursing home owner sentenced to three months in jail for permitting overcrowding at the home yesterday claimed that she had attempted to reduce the numbers but had been unable to find alternative care places for some of her patients.
Margaret Ahlart, of Resthaven, Meelin, Newmarket, Co Cork, was sentenced to three jail terms of one month each, to run consecutively, by Judge Michael Pattwell at Kanturk District Court on Wednesday.
Ahlart claimed that she had tried to find places elsewhere for four patients after she had been warned by the Southern Health Board about the overcrowding at the nursing home.
"I tried to get rid of three or four patients but their relatives refused because they had nowhere else to put them. I explained to the relatives that we were breaking the regulations but they said the patients were more than happy here.
"One woman tried to get her mother into nursing homes all over north Cork and Cork city, but without success," Ahlart said.
She told the court she was registered with the Southern Health Board to care for nine patients, but when board inspectors called on January 18th and on June 7th last, they found that she had exceeded the number.
"I was registered for nine people but there's no business viable today with nine people, given the overheads involved. I have to pay nurses and domestic staff and other overheads, so we increased our nursing home from nine beds to 20 beds.
"In the meantime, we were given permission verbally to take in another five or six people once the place was in good order . . . We did that in good faith - it wasn't in writing, but my husband, Walter, and Mary Healy [head nurse] and myself all witnessed it."
She said the home had been inspected four times by officials this year, and just three weeks before she went to court on Wednesday she was re-registered by the board to cater for 20 patients.
The head nurse, Mary Healy, was also prosecuted for a breach of the nursing home regulations. She was jailed for one month on a charge of failing to provide a high standard of nursing care.
Judge Pattwell said that he had a duty of care to elderly people and could not condone breaches of nursing home regulations.
The home's proprietor said she felt the sentence was extreme and admitted she was shocked at the prospect of going to prison. She said she would lodge an appeal.