‘An Incredible Set Of Events’ [Updated]

at

Yesterday.

The Dáil sitting at the Convention centre, Dublin

Aontú leader Peadar Toibín revealed new information about how as many as 10,000 older people were moved from hospitals into nursing homes at the start of Covid. Over 2,000 people died reportedly with Covid in nursing homes.

Peadar Toibīn: “Yesterday, under freedom of information, a document was released to me from the National Treatment Purchase Fund, (NTPF). The document was an email (above), which was issued to nursing homes by the contract manager of the NTPF shortly before 10am on 12 March 2020.

I have already furnished the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Mary Butler, with a copy of this email, which states that the NTPF had been asked to establish capacity within the nursing home sector. It goes on to state that nursing homes will need:

“…to have the ability to care for patients coming from [the] acute hospital setting…”

and further states:

“Facilities must be able to facilitate short term residents being discharged from [an] acute hospital. …residents…may be nominated by the HSE [and] the Department of Health as applicable for receipt of appropriate funding.”

Describing what will happen, the letter states that the individual facility would co-ordinate directly with the discharge unit within the hospital.

This is a damning document. In many ways, it is a smoking gun. We know that the Covid-19 nursing home expert panel found that 10,000 patients were discharged from hospitals into nursing homes in the first six months of 2020.

Was it a Government decision to move elderly patients, wholesale, out of hospital beds and cram them into nursing homes?

The major question is who instructed the NTPF to issue this email? The email states that nursing homes were asked to establish capacity. Who asked them? That is the first question.

We have also learned a pot of money was offered to nursing homes at this time. How much was offered to get older people out of hospitals? The context of this discussion is pivotal. In early March, nursing homes voluntarily closed their doors to visitors in an attempt to protect vulnerable residents.

On 10 March, Dr. Holohan, the Chief Medical Officer, issued a statement stating that these restrictions were not necessary. This document shows that two days after telling nursing homes to reopen their doors, an email was issued to nursing homes instructing them to make way for a large influx of patients from hospitals.

Further FOI documents released reveal that, throughout all of this, the Minister for Health at the time, Deputy Simon Harris, repeatedly ignored requests for meetings from the CEO, of Nursing Homes Ireland, Tadhg Daly.

The Fianna Fáil Opposition spokesperson at the time was the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and he revealed that the HSE “intercepted” supplies of oxygen, personal protective equipment, PPE, and staff that were meant for nursing homes.

Was there a concerted effort by the Government or the HSE to take older people out of the safety of hospitals and cram them into nursing homes during the pandemic?

How could this decision be made when the Minister in charge was ignoring appeals from the sector to meet with him, when nursing homes were having their PPE, oxygen and staff taken from them by the HSE and when the CMO was telling nursing homes to keep their doors wide open to the public?

These were an incredible set of events at a period when there was an influx of Covid-19 in this country. It should be remembered, in all the conversations we have had about Covid, the majority of people who died with Covid were in a nursing home or hospital, two locations owned, or under the regulation of, this Government. Can the Minister answer these questions?”

In her reply, Hildegarde Naughton,  Minister of State at the Department of Transport, declined to address these issues, but stated:

“The decision to discharge patients from hospitals to nursing home settings is always subject to clinical assessment. Discharges to nursing homes and other settings are a regular, daily feature of a functioning health system. The period from early March 2020 to mid-April 2020 saw an increase in the number of such discharged patients as the health system prepared itself for an expected surge in Covid-19 cases. From an older person’s perspective, being admitted for longer than necessary increases the risk of a patient contracting a healthcare associated infection or deconditioning. The vast majority of these discharges took place from 10 March 2020 onwards, when clear public health guidance was in place across all acute hospitals.”

Paedar Toibín: “In fairness, none of the questions I asked about accountability have been addressed by the Minister of State whatsoever. This is a serious problem. We need clarification with regard to who is behind these decisions.

She [Deputy Naughton] mentioned that HSE support was provided to the nursing homes. That is not exactly true. Further freedom of information documents I have received show that on 19 October 2020, the Minister of State with responsibility for older persons and mental health, Deputy Mary Butler, wrote to the chief executive of the HSE, Mr. Paul Reid, seeking assurances that the HSE would continue to provide staffing support to homes.

Paul Reid did not respond to the Minister of State for a month. When he did, he said that all was well and that the HSE would continue to provide funding for nursing home staffing and support for nursing homes. On 16 October 2020, a similar letter was sent to Mr. Phelim Quinn, the chief executive of HIQA. Paul Reid said he was disappointed that Mr. Quinn stated certain private nursing homes had not reported that they have received support from the HSE.

When Mr. Reid was telling HIQA and the Minister of State that all was well, I had people from nursing homes on the telephone to me crying for staff. I have in mind specifically a case in the Minister of State, Deputy [Martin] Naughton’s, county, Galway. It occurred almost at the same time that these letters were issued. All staff in a nursing home, bar two, tested positive and it was left without any support. This resulted in the two staff who had tested negative being unable to leave the nursing home because there were no replacement staff.

That is an incredible situation. In case the Minister of State did not notice, the headlines in the newspapers at the time were screaming about staff shortages in nursing homes. All the while there were 75,000 people who had applied to Be On Call for Ireland but they were pretty much left untouched.

The Minister of State mentioned people being discharged under normal regulations. People were being discharged from these hospitals into nursing homes without being tested. It was an incredible situation. When will there be a full investigation? When will there be accountability? When can we be sure this will not happen again?”

Yesterday: Damned

Previously: Left To Die: Nursing Home Timeline

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64 thoughts on “‘An Incredible Set Of Events’ [Updated]

  1. Slave to the Rhythm

    blah blah cheap headlines and posturing, literally dancing on the graves of the most vulnerable in society to make some cheap political points, what would Peadar have done any different?
    Maybe saved a few unborn babies as well? These righteous Aontú preaching types literally turn my stomach. Fupp off back to Connemara and Donegal and knit an Aran Jumper lads, chew some tobacco, win a few cocks of hay and sow a few lazy beds of spuds and turnips

    1. MR.T

      Too right! Doesnt Toibin realize that the state is allowed to kill who it wants with impunity?

    2. Gringo

      At the risk of further upsetting your delicate digestive system may I suggest that you call Damo down by the canal to replenish your medication. And stay out of the sun.

  2. Furore2021

    Pre-meditated slaughter of our old people. To kick this plop show off. Country is unsalvageable at this point.

    1. Bodger

      This story is getting no coverage on RTÉ/IT, etc. I guess granny wasn’t that important after all.

  3. SOQ

    10 000 in the first six months of 2020? Seriously? I do remember Tadhg Daly going public about that. Fair play to Peadar- someone needs to speak out for those poor people.

    1. U N M U T U A L

      It would seem that the majority of gov/health authorities across europe and elsewhere all made similar decisions/mistakes.
      Considering the timeline of events, one might think they could have learned from each other’s mistakes, perhaps even communicated to each other…

  4. Just Sayin

    Yes , shame on Peadar for pointing out the the majority of our covid deaths occurred in nursing homes and were largely due to government incompetence.

    The great unwashed need to be kept in a state of fear, they must be convinced that there is a plague amongst us rather than in hospitals or nursing homes.

    Otherwise how do we keep them scared enough to keep taking experimental vaccines without asking any awkward questions.

  5. perricrisptayto

    Maybe Claire Byrne might do a special on it. From a bubble obviously. Well, you can’t be too careful.

  6. ida

    Holohan instructs nursing homes to open, 48 hours later Reid and Harris move thousands of old people from the safety of hospital to their deaths in nursing homes.

    And Holohan still hasn’t washed the cervical screening blood from his hands, what a great guy to have in charge

  7. Slave to the Rhythm

    So only people who follow Tóibín and co generally comment in here?
    Or is it just down to the hot weather today, we are only getting the real diehards in?

  8. Cian

    Hmm: The HSE needed to do something once they saw Covid hitting Italy so hard,. They needed to free as many available hospital beds as possible. But there were a lot of older people in those beds.

    Options:

    1. Do nothing, Leave the old people in hospital. The hospitals were going to be the epicentre of covid cases. Outcome – insufficient free beds (patients miss out on treatment) AND lots of old people die from Covid in hospital (because it is so infectious). not good.

    2. Move elderly to care homes, Outcome – more free beds (patients can get on treatment). Potentially old people die from Covid in care homes (because it is very infectious) – some may bring Covid from hospital to care home.

    3. Move elderly to temporary hospital (conventions centre) area, Outcome – more free beds (patients can get on treatment). But you have all your eggs in one basket. If covid hit this 1000-bed area then it would have seemed like euthanasia.

    4. something else?

    There were no good options.

    1. Blob

      5. Test them before sending them to nursing homes. if they test positive, send them to covid ward. negative, send them to nursing home.

      1. ida

        The FF & FG shrills will be all over social media now.
        Something something IRA, covid covid.

      2. Cian

        There was extremely limited testing available at the time (everywhere in the world, not just Ireland), and the tests were slow (again, this wasn’t just Ireland).

        Get a swab on granny on Monday, get a negative test result back on Wednesday, ship her on Thursday (oh wait, she’s been in hospital for 3 days and may have picked up Covid in those 3 days)

    2. SOQ

      Let’s unspin those options so

      1. Leave infected people where they would receive the appropriate care.
      2. Bang them all into care homes without bothering to check who has CoVid-19 and who has not.
      3. Throw all into a large glorified hospice because palliative care would have be the only real planned protocol available in CityWest.

      They opted for 2 while at the same time playing on the general public’s communitarian spirit and/or guilt. In my opinion that is the actions of either a sociopath or a psychopath, because the same thing had already happened in a number of other countries- so there was a precedent, and there was lessons to be learned.

      Now you could say they were spooked by Italy but they are supposed to be professionals trained in how to handle such situations. In fairness, if they were being influenced by those bloody modellers then I am surprised they didn’t get the JCB’s out, and start digging mass graves.

      The bottom line is, they were using war time medicine at a time when there was absolutely no need for it. People suffered unnecessarily and people died unnecessarily- a public enquiry is the only option- it is the right thing to do.

      1. jungleman

        I’m confused by your pattern of arguments. You leap quite unashamedly from saying that it is a disgrace how all these elderly people died due to mismanagement during the COVID pandemic to saying that it was not necessary to move them which seems to be to downplay the lethality of the pandemic. You will claim that the vaccines are not real vaccines and that ivermectin is the cure. Everything you say regardless of how contradictory or just how unqualified you are to say so you say with absolute confidence. You were banging on about 5G a few months ago. You should have a look back through all your posts since the pandemic started and gather your thoughts.

    3. Ghost of Yep

      “There were no good options.”

      Classic Cian. Total reductionist when trying to avoid acknowledging the incompetence of particular groups.

      2 happened.

      What was clear from Italy and across the continent before it was here in serious numbers was that this demographic and these establishments needed to be managed closely and provided the extra support required to protect lives. This did not happen. There is no way around that.

      But sure do the shrug your fupping shoulders emoji and brush it aside because you only care about perception and not the truth.

      You’re too smart to work for the Journal Cian. You’re also too smart to have spent the time you have here over the years purely for fun. Consistently skewing and swaying while pretending to care only about facts….sure Nigel likes you so there is that.

      1. Cian

        Yes, there were mistakes made. But you need to look at what was known when the decisions were made.

        Hindsight is wonderful (but even with the full benefit of hindsight I’m not sure things would have turned out differently)

        What other options were there in March 2020?

        1. Ghost of Yep

          Half of the deaths happened during the third wave. You need to look at why that was allowed happen.

          1. Cian

            I dunno. Perhaps Covid is a really contagious disease and when it is rife in the community it is very, very difficult to protect the vulnerable.

            Perhaps the best way to protect the vulnerable is to keep community rates as low as possible?

      2. Micko

        “What was clear from Italy and across the continent before it was here in serious numbers was that this demographic and these establishments needed to be managed closely and provided the extra support required to protect lives”

        The media were way too busy telling us that ANYONE of ANY AGE can die from Covid.

        Ye know – to get more clicks by panicking the living pants out of people.

        Sure remember the stories of nurses having breakdowns and begging the HSE for PPE at the start of all this.

        They were bloody terrified. No wonder mistakes were made.

        1. Nigel

          Anyone of any age CAN die of covid.

          All these deaths because we weren’t prepared and we didn’t react properly and you’re still mocking people for being scared and wanting our government to react properly.

          1. Micko

            Yes, but it’s highly unlikely for a young person to die. Currently in Ireland a person under 45 has a 0.0018% chance of dying.

            54 people in 3 million have died. (As per pre-Cyber attack figures)

            Do you disagree?

          2. Nigel

            Less likely to die, yes, unless they’re vulnerable in some way, but very likely to catch it, possibly getting quite ill, and spread it, you know, the way it spread through nursing homes, only out in the wider community.

          3. Micko

            Yes, the vunerable are always vulnerable.

            What’s your point?

            Note: I should actually rephrase that bit above to “currently 0.0018% of the Irish population under 45 HAS died”

            Not “a chance of dying”. Their chances of dying are different and have been pretty well documented from the start.

            Although you wouldn’t know it if you just watched MSM ;)

            Which I didn’t…

          4. Nigel

            My point is, even accepting your unconfirmed, decontextualised and carefully isolated numerical argument, there’s not much benefit in being at low risk of mortality if you’re still liable to catch it and spread it and possibly get quite sick in the process, all the while still having a real chance of actually dying.

          5. General Public

            Your acceptance was akin to teeth being pulled and came riddled with caveats. Have some decency and accept when your wrong.

  9. Nigel

    It’s amazing. Deaths caused by government and HSE incompetence in pandemic response and a lack of pandemic preparedness being condemned by people who have declared themsleves ideologically opposed to being prepared for or responding to pandemics.

    1. Ghost of Yep

      Who? Specifically? Don’t use this thread to take general digs at people to make yourself a moral superior. Comment on the story or comment directly.

      1. Nigel

        Do you support money being spent, legislation passed, people trained, resources allocated, co-operation and consultation with international bodies, in order to be prepared for possible future pandemics? Absent that, did you or do you support pandemic responses such as mask mandates, lockdowns, travel restrictions, mass vaccination and other measures in order to protect the entire population from the effects of a highly contagious virus? Do you think that the nursing home deaths are a result of a refusal to take the threat of a pandemic seriously despite years of warnings by experts? Do you think we should learn from this in terms of how we handle the next pandemic? If you do, I’m not talking about you. Obviously. But if you’re really that curious, I’m sure they’ll be along shortly.

    2. f_lawless

      Nigel’s reduced to strawman arguments to convince himself he’s on the moral high ground. Same old story.

      People who are opposed to lockdowns, mask mandates don’t do so because they are ideologically opposed to pandemic preparedness. It’s because they believe that they are pseudo scientific politicised measures set out by corrupted institutions.

      A ‘Focused Protection’ strategy is in line with with convetional scientific consensus prior to the Covid era, has been used effectively in Florida for example and is advocated by a Irish health expert group Recovery Ireland

      1. Nigel

        ‘People who are opposed to lockdowns, mask mandates don’t do so because they are ideologically opposed to pandemic preparedness. It’s because they believe that they are pseudo scientific politicised measures set out by corrupted institutions.’

        You just said, ‘I’m not ideologically opposed to these, I’m just ideologically opposed to them.’

  10. Jack D

    Correct: 10,710 people were discharged from hospitals from LTRC

    But this was to LTRC – Long Term Residential Care and DOES NOT mean that it was just to nursing homes for the elderly.

    The table that shows the figures even states that LTRC is “Nursing home, convalescent home or long stay accommodation.”

    Let’s look at the figures – from the report:

    32,000:
    The COVID-19 Nursing Homes Expert Panel report was primarily focused on the approximately 57613 registered nursing homes which provide about 32,000 beds across the country.

    30,000:
    Up to approximately 30,000 people are currently living in nursing homes in Ireland, on a long-stay or short-stay basis.

    So are you trying to say that there were an EXTRA 10,000 shifted into nursing homes? The report doesn’t show exactly how many were shifted into nursing homes.

    So STATING:
    Aontú leader Peadar Toibín revealed new information about how as many as 10,000 older people were moved from hospitals into nursing homes at the start of Covid.
    is NOT CORRECT

    The report does not find that 10,000 OLDER people were moved.

    The report goes from 30/12/2019 to 25/05/2020 – which is 22 weeks and not a sudden shift of 10,000 people ‘at the start of Covid’.

    Also from 30/12/2019 to 03/02/2020 (so from late December to the start of February – remember the first confirmed case of Covid wasn’t until 29/02/2020) 3,994 people were discharged from hospitals to Long Term Residential Care (to repeat DOES NOT MEAN they were all OLDER people to nursing homes).

    It is easy to take figures and make blanket statements to rile up the public.

    Of course the HSE wanted to shift as many people out of hospitals at the start of Covid – there was NO IDEA of how over-run the system could get (which thankfully it didn’t – it was stretched.) By the way system doesn’t mean just beds, it also includes staffing.

    But did our nursing home system go from having a capacity for 32,000 beds to suddenly needing to care for 42,000? Nope.

    If you want to read the report:
    https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/3af5a-covid-19-nursing-homes-expert-panel-final-report/

    1. GiggidyGoo

      Now, read the letter from ‘Section 40’, and focus on the point he was making and not the figures. It mentions ‘nursing home’ all over the place.
      The indication that the people being transferred will not require long term care says a multitude. Despicable. Holohan, of course at the helm, proudly assisted by Boo Boo Harris. Sure they make a great team.

      1. Jack D

        @GiggidyGoo – you wrote ‘focus on the point he was making and not the figures’

        My reply to that: focus on the point I was making in my post, which is to talk about 10,000 older people is not correct. It is hyperbolic. If Aontú leader Peadar Toibín wants to make a point, he should underpin it by showing that he understands and knows the figures he is using.

        My reply to his question:
        Was it a Government decision to move elderly patients, wholesale, out of hospital beds and cram them into nursing homes?

        If I read the ‘smoking gun’ it says the NTPF was “asked to establish capacity within the Nursing Home sector to inform national capacity planning for the coming weeks” and “at this point, we only wish to establish capacity to admit such residents into your home”.

        Establishing capacity and then using that capacity is not CRAMMING people into nursing homes.

        To your point, GiggidyGoo: “The indication that the people being transferred will not require long term care says a multitude”.

        Yes, because the people they were PLANNING to shift did not require to long term care. These people would normally have left the hospital system and went back to their own homes after getting the care they needed.

        They were trying to plan to have as much capacity in the hospital system for a possible onslaught of Covid cases.

        And yes, over 10,000 people were shifted out of hospitals, but it does NOT mean they were all shifted to ‘nursing homes’.

        And the reason as you state: “It mentions ‘nursing home’ all over the place” is because it was the email that was sent to NURSING HOMES. There are probably variations of this sent to the other LTRCs.

        But no, it is easier to play into the hyperbolic shite and not think rationally about the situation and what you’re reading. It is easier to say “10,000 old folk were crammed into nursing homes by Tony Holohan and Simon Harris, because I dislike Holohan and Boo Boo Harris – let me get on my soapbox and say whatever I feel like saying off the top of my head because I have this figure here and one email sent there – and I only read the red underlined bits that feed into my point”

        By the way, NO WHERE in that email does it STATE that the residents were going to be elderly. NO WHERE. They were being asked about patients who require “a variety of nursing and healthcare needs” that need “Appropriately skilled staff to care for residents with potentially more acute needs, for example IV administrating and post-op monitoring”. It might have stated to “assess the patient for suitability for their home” which does not mean that had to be old, just that home had the ability to care for them.

        Was the HSE planning to shift people out of hospital, people who would eventually leave hospital and go home, because of the unknown scale of the pandemic? – YEAH THEY WERE.
        Was the HSE planning to use the trained professionals in nursing homes to help with this? YEAH THEY WERE.
        Was the HSE seeing what the capacity in nursing homes was? YEAH THEY WERE.

        Were 10,000 people crammed into nursing homes? THAT I CAN NOT SAY BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE A BREAKDOWN OF FIGURES.

        Peadar Toibín is in the Dail taking the Government to task over planning for the pandemic. But my problem with him (and Broadsheet, for making it seem like this EMAIL is so bloody important) is that he’s not asking the right questions.

        Let’s go through the BOLD questions from Tobin’s Dail statement:

        Who asked them?
        The HSE and Minister for Health did.

        How much was offered to get older people out of hospitals?
        This email is not just about OLDER people, but yes, lots of money was spent my the Government to prepare for the pandemic, including deals with private hospitals in the State, that in hindsight didn’t need to be spent. But you know… unknown pandemic.

        voluntarily closed their doors to visitors in an attempt to protect vulnerable residents.
        Correct.

        not necessary
        Correct.

        two days after telling nursing homes to reopen their doors, an email was issued to nursing homes instructing them to make way for a large influx of patients from hospitals.
        INCORRECT. The document shows that nursing homes were being asked about their capacity.

        repeatedly ignored requests for meetings from the CEO, of Nursing Homes Ireland,
        Yep. Simon Harris apparently ignored five letters and emails over four weeks – so his bad.

        Was there a concerted effort by the Government or the HSE to take older people out of the safety of hospitals and cram them into nursing homes during the pandemic?
        SEE ABOVE. But no, they were not all older people. No they were not going to be crammed into nursing homes because each nursing home was being asked about their capacity. And ‘out of the safety of hospitals’ – why are nursing homes less safe than hospitals? Hospitals that they were planning might be filled with patients with Covid, which would seem that it would make hospitals LESS safe.

        It should be remembered, in all the conversations we have had about Covid, the majority of people who died with Covid were in a nursing home or hospital, two locations owned, or under the regulation of, this Government
        Firstly, what a stupid statement: people who died with Covid were in a hospital, because they were needed to be in an ICUs.

        In fact the correct version of this is:
        It should be remembered, in all the conversations we have had about Covid, ALL the people who died with Covid were in a nursing home or hospital, two locations owned, or under the regulation of, this Government

        I’ve had enough ranting about this.

        But before I go…

        I am sad that we didn’t get to protect older people. I am sad that elderly people died because they contracted Covid.

        Covid-19 was and is a very serious virus. That on the 16 July 2019 (2 years ago) was not a thing.

      2. GiggidyGoo

        I tend to focus more on the overall content the article above, not an attempt to shift the focus to what some poster wants to focus on. i.e. 10,000 and harp on about it. The overall point (focus) was that many elderly were shifted to nursing homes with little or no regard for their health. No one seems to be answerable.

        1. GiggidyGoo

          and just to expand…… with little or no regard for their health, nor the health of the existing residents.
          The email states, categorically, ‘All potential residents will be tested and cleared by the hospital of the Covid-19 virus’. That was a lie, but I suppose there is at least one group from who redress can be sought – the hospitals that didn’t clear the patients of the virus.

    1. Micko

      The same minister for health that thought there was 18 previous Coronaviruses before Covid 19

      https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/simon-harris-sorry-for-awful-boo-boo-about-18-viruses-before-covid-19-1.4235478

      I know he’s human and makes mistakes, but he was the actual bloody minister for health. Had attended briefings and was supposed to be up to speed on the latest info on the virus. Why the hell was he talking about something he has no clue about.

      I suppose it was a pretty big warning sign.

      1. U N M U T U A L

        The harris award, tony’s superman mural and the key to city… Classic spin doctoring.
        Now that this story is breaking, it’ll be interesting to see what the next distraction will be.

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