Time and accountability

The Health Information and Quality Authority did a report on Rostrevor Nursing Home last year and found it was fit for purpose.

Last week, after whistleblowers in the home came forward with horror stories of abuse, HIQA made an Interim Order cancelling the registration of the home.

These events are the norm in dysfunctional states.

In dysfunctional states, regulatory authorities are not established to actually regulate, they are established to give the impression of regulation so that those who run the state can pretend to citizens and the wider world that the state is normal and functional.

When this system of pretence and hypocrisy is upset by pesky whistleblowers the state reacts with ‘committees’, ‘tribunals’, ‘reviews’ and promises of ‘reform’ all of which provide the magic ingredient that guarantees non accountability – time.