The Health Service Executive (HSE) plans to start making inspection reports for nursing homes publicly available via the internet in the coming weeks, it has confirmed.
However, the reports will not be retrospective, meaning they will only refer to institutions inspected since the end of June of this year, when a new standardised system of reporting was introduced.
A spokesman for the HSE said that it expected a "certain number" of the reports to be available via the internet within the next few weeks.
He added that the HSE was hoping that inspection reports for the majority of the remaining 431 non-public nursing homes around the country would be available online by the end of the year. He said he was not in a position to provide The Irish Times with a copy of the new standardised reporting format.
In her annual report, published last May, the information commissioner, Emily O'Reilly, expressed concern about the length of time it has taken for the reports to be published.
She urged the HSE "to proceed as speedily as possible with the implementation of the commitment, given in June 2005, to publish all nursing home inspection reports as a matter of course".
A spokesman for Ms O'Reilly's office yesterday welcomed the news that the reports were to be published in the coming weeks.
Many health authorities have in the past been slow to release inspection reports under the Freedom of Information Act, often on the grounds of commercial sensitivity.
But among the issues raised by inspectors in reports previously released under the Act were incidences of patients only getting baths or showers every 10 days and of food being cleaned off dinner plates and being kept for use in stew or soup the following day.
A total of 35 residents in private nursing homes in the midwest and north-east were also found to be infected with the MRSA superbug when the homes were inspected last year.
The HSE spokesman said that the delay in publishing the reports was due to an extensive public consultation process in relation to the standardised format of reporting. Under the HSE's plans it is envisaged that anyone wanting to access the reports will be asked to click on individual counties before selecting from a list of those homes for which inspection reports exist.
Last week, The Irish Times reported that the HSE had refused a Freedom of Information request from this newspaper to release a report into all deaths which took place at the Leas Cross nursing home. Prof Des O'Neill, who conducted the review, subsequently described his findings as "grave" and "disturbing".
The HSE also refused to release the findings of an internal review of its nursing home inspection process.