Now we must have the truth over nursing home response

SCIENTISTS over time come to see mistakes as useful because, little by little, they may lead to the truth. But there are limits to such consolation – especially when error may lead to loss of life. Answers to how more than 50pc of all Covid-19 deaths in this country occurred in nursing homes have to be found. From the outset, older people were known to be most vulnerable to the virus and congregated settings identified as the perfect envi- ronment for it to take hold.

We now need to figure out what went wrong and why, not to apportion blame but to make sure nursing homes are protected in future.

The first weeks of the pandemic saw a litany of cascading failures.

Given the heightened dangers to patients and staff in the homes, how could some staff have been forced to use painters’ overalls and supplies from a local school and vet as personal protective equipment (PPE)?

How could it take weeks to get residents and staff tested? A series of communications between the Department of Health and the nursing home sector makes for distressing reading.

There was evidently a lack of guidance and support at critical periods during the catch-fire phase of the outbreak.

As the emergency escalated, repeated attempts by the sector to get clarity on testing, curbs on visiting and access to PPE all came to nothing.

Warnings by Nursing Homes Ireland chief executive Tadhg Daly, who wrote several times to the HSE, and Health Minister Simon Harris highlighting that the situation could get “out of control”, have also just been revealed.

The department has come in for strong criticism over the manner in which the correspondence was released only 90 minutes ahead of an Oireachtas committee meeting being attended by Nursing Homes Ireland. “Not good enough” was Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane’s comment on the fact the committee had so little time to study the expansive documentation.

At the actual committee meeting, Fine Gael TD Fergus O’Dowd told Mr Daly nursing homes “could have done a lot more to help” themselves. “You are making the point that the State or the Department of Health or the HSE was responsible,” he told Mr Daly. Discovering what happened, without prejudice, is vital not for the purpose of recrimination but for preventing it from happening again.

Health workers who went to work putting their lives on the line, knowing they were not protected because of shortages, need assurance this cannot happen again.

We do not need expensive commissions, tribunals or stultifying inquiries running for years, only to offer torturous interpretations and hypothesis.

It may be impossible to take away grief, but it is all too easy to add to it by refusing to recognise it or pay due respect.

And if it is too late for comfort, those who died, those who survived and those who still mourn must at least have the truth.

Health workers need assurance this cannot happen again