A 41-year-old man who was left brain-damaged after an attack in Dublin 18 months ago died early yesterday.
Vincent O'Brien, from O'Moore Road, Ballyfermot, was taken to St James's Hospital after the attack in August 2005 and remained there until just over a week ago when he was moved, against his family's wishes, to a nursing home at the Curragh in Co Kildare.
His mother, Mary O'Brien, told The Irish Timesyesterday that while the nursing home was a lovely place with great staff, her son went downhill after the move. He seemed to notice that she was unable to visit him every day, as she had done when he was in Dublin, she said.
She said she was aged 65, had a heart condition and was unable to drive, and this made it difficult for her to visit her son in the Suncroft nursing home.
Of his time in St James's, she said: "I had him coming on great there. I would tell him all the funny things that would happen at home and he would be in convulsions . . . From the time he went to Suncroft he never came back to me. He went into himself. He went very much downhill within the week . . . I think he missed me going in.
"All I wanted was a place in Dublin where I could visit him regularly."
Ms O'Brien said claims in the Dáil to the effect that she had refused an offer to allow him to be transferred to another nursing home were unfounded.
Her son, a single man, was taken to Naas General Hospital on Monday and died there early yesterday. His body was removed to the Dublin city morgue for a postmortem.
Ms O'Brien, a widow who had eight children, said she was always upset that nobody was apprehended for the attack on her son at Bluebell in 2005. The fact that he died within days of having been moved to a nursing home against the family's wishes compounded the family's grief, she said.
Labour TD Dr Mary Upton raised the issue of the transfer of Mr O'Brien to the nursing home in the Dáil earlier this month.
She asked Minister for Health Mary Harney to investigate a trend of the movement of patients to homes where they could not be visited regularly by their families.
Minister of State Michael Ahern TD, replying in the Dáil on behalf of Ms Harney, said a place for Mr O'Brien was offered in a nursing home and this had been refused by the family. He added that it was not always possible to place a patient in a facility close to their family.
"Every effort is made by the executive and individual hospitals to ensure that patients are placed in a care setting which is appropriate to their individual needs," he added.
Dr Upton said yesterday the Health Service Executive, in moving Mr O'Brien against his family's wishes, had driven "a coach-and-four over Vincent's rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and the 1970 Health Act".
Mr O'Brien was on his way home in the early hours of August 18th, 2005, after visiting friends when he was set upon by a group of men on Huband Road, Bluebell.