The Irish Times view on care homes: The right to have a say

Court of Appeal ruling likely to have long-term consequences for treatment of vulnerable

A Court of Appeal ruling that a hospital acted illegally by preventing the discharge of an elderly woman with dementia is likely to have long-term consequences. No statutory power to detain the woman had been identified, Mr Justice Gerard Hogan found, and if the courts accepted this “self-created power of detention” in her “best interests” then tens of thousands of people with impaired capacity in nursing homes could be prevented from leaving. There was, he said, no halfway house between liberty, unfettered by restraint, and an arrest.

Read full article in The Irish Times