https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZkifTkJtr8

Áras Attracta Care Centre in Co Mayo, top, and a clip advertising tonight’s Prime Time

An RTÉ Investigations Unit report into the Áras Attracta Care Centre in Co. Mayo will be broadcast on Prime Time on RTÉ One tonight.

During the making of the programme, residents were secretly filmed being force-fed, slapped, kicked, physically restrained and shouted at.

Ahead of tonight’s show, Sheila Ryan – sister of Mary Garvan, who is a resident of the centre – spoke to Sean O’Rourke. Ms Ryan saw the Prime Time footage before speaking to Mr O’Rourke.

Ms Ryan came on the show after National Secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association, Noel Giblin – who worked at the centre several years ago – spoke to Mr O’Rourke.

Sheila Ryan: “My sister is 65 years old. She has been in residential care all her life, unfortunately for her, since she was about 7 years of age. In the days when she was born, there were no services for somebody with intellectual disabilities. My sister now is both physically disabled, while she’s in a wheelchair, and she’s mute. So the way she communicates is by her body language. I must say about my sister, she’s very genteel and ladylike and very, very quiet and affectionate. And the nurses and the care staff have all told me that and when they’re getting her in and out of the bath in the morning , to prepare for the day, she actually helps them. She hasn’t got challenging behaviour. [Noel Giblin] He made a statement that all those people in there have extremely challenging behaviour, that is not the case. Not all of them have, some have.”

Sean O’Rourke: “He was critical of the mix, of the different levels of disability, as a result of the cutbacks, that was one of the points he was…”

Ryan: “Yes, I’ll address that in a second but I just want to say that before I address that point. He kind of inferred, from what I gather that, in some way, if you’re dealing with somebody with extreme physical behaviour or challenging behaviour, is it ever justified to find, to physically assault somebody?”

O’Rourke: “I don’t think he was suggesting that. He was quite critical of the behaviour but he was saying, you’ve got to look as well at the way the place is managed, or not managed, as the case may be. But just to come back to your sister, Mary Garvan, you’ve seen some of the footage?”

Ryan: “Yes, I have seen the footage.”

O’Rourke: “What did you see?”

Ryan: “I thought it was extremely disturbing. In one incident, she had a blanket put over her head, when she was crying out for attention for a long period of time. She was crying out for ages, for hours. And all she was asking for, through her making noises and through her body language, was asking to be put over by the window, instead of facing a wall. And either a nurse or care worker came out and placed a blanket over her head. Another time she was looking to be changed out of her chair, you know her wheelchair. And, as you know, you’re sitting there, stagnant, for a very long period of time and she was looking to be changed. She knows when she wants to go to the bathroom or whatever else and she indicated it. And the care people came out and they mishandled and threatened her and they threatened to put her out to the porch. And the porch is where some of the residents smoke and it’s a very cold and dreary place. And you could see her cowering in the chair when all these threats were made. And they manhandled her and manhandled her in and out of the chair and her bones are very fragile. Recently my brother was visiting and he asked could he, himself and his wife visited, asked if they could talk to her by herself. And they said, ‘well you can take her out to the porch’ and he started to wheel her out to the porch and she put her two hands on the door, she wouldn’t move. And we, they couldn’t understand it. And when I saw the video footage it made sense because she was threatened with this punishment of being put out to a cold porch, smokey porch.”

O’Rourke: “How long has she been a resident of Áras Attracta?”

Ryan: “About 20 years.”

O’Rourke: “What was your sense up to this, about the level of care she was getting?”

Ryan: “Well, you see, it’s very hard to know. When you go in there, everybody is on their best behaviour and we, one time, about , about a year and a half ago, before the HIQA report came out, myself and my sister, we visited and we thought she looked malnourished and we queried it with the staff that was there and they said that she’d had a kidney infection and she hadn’t been well. And we accepted that explanation because she was always a very slim girl and we thought, well, yes but we did notice, we took in food and she gobbled it up and we were wondering like, ‘you know, you look as if you’re hungry’. So we inquired about her diet and things like that and they said, ‘oh yeah, she’s eating very well’ and all this kind of stuff. And then, about nine months later, the HIQA report came out and that was the result of a gentleman dying. And we were shocked. And my sister and myself and my brother – because he was here in Ireland, my brother in America – we discussed between ourselves what would we do, what action would we take. Because a lot of violent things came from that HIQA report and we said, well maybe, every organisation from time to time needs a good shake-up and new systems put in place and things looked at, and reforms, and we’ll leave it and maybe they’re doing the best they can in a very challenging environment. And we visited after that and everything seemed to be OK. So, you know, what worries us now is this: this culture existed, a culture of neglect, abuse. And I know it existed because when that HIQA report came out, it didn’t identify, you know, it didn’t point a finger to say this existed because everybody was on the best behaviour because HIQA was there. So this culture was there and when all this broke and RTE showed me the film footage, I rang Mr Kenny who was the administrator there, [and asked] ‘What systems and policies and procedures have you in place to show that staff, in care, are not sexually, physically verbally abused?’ And he didn’t know what I was speaking about. And I said, you know, I was a manager, I said, I had to have systems in place – even for the protection of the staff in the midst of false allegations.”

Listen back in full here

Concerns over Mayo care home raised four years ago (RTE)