A litany of poor practice in several private nursing homes across the State, including instances of dinner food being recycled for use on another date, has been found by inspectors.
In one relatively recent inspection on a home in north Dublin, it emerged that patients only got a bath or shower every 10 days.
Details of the poor standards are contained in reports, some released only in recent weeks to Fine Gael TD Fergus O'Dowd.
Their content, made available by Mr O'Dowd in the wake of Monday's Prime Time programme, should increase pressure on the Government to speed up its plans to establish an independent nursing homes inspectorate, he said last night.
Yesterday, the nursing home at the centre of the Prime Time investigation, Leas Cross in Swords, effectively agreed to a takeover by the Health Service Executive (HSE). The executive has assigned a director of nursing and senior nursing staff to the home to improve standards.
The HSE, which visited patients in the home yesterday, said the new staff would be in place this morning and an independent inquiry would take place. It is also putting in place at the home a "clinical governance steering committee", representative of residents and independent experts.
Minister for Health Mary Harney apologised to the Leas Cross nursing home residents last night and said substandard care in the home should have been picked up.
The Minister of State with responsibility for older people, Seán Power, said he would ask the Garda to investigate the allegations made in the programme. "I think some of what we witnessed last night on television was horrific and I will be asking the gardaí to investigate it," he told reporters in Dublin.
Furthermore, he said, it was "quite obvious" an independent nursing homes inspectorate was necessary and legislation underpinning it was being drafted. He hoped the inspectorate would be in place before the end of the year.
Up to now, private nursing homes are inspected by the HSE and while they are supposed to be inspected twice a year, this has not happened. There is no inspectorate for publicly-funded nursing homes.
Some relatives of patients in Leas Cross expressed the wish to find alternative accommodation for their family members. Other relatives expressed satisfaction with the care extended to their relatives by the home.
Leas Cross, in a statement last evening, said it was available to speak to the families of residents who had concerns. It said it had met with the HSE to "address a number of concerns regarding the standards of care as indentified by the Nursing Home Inspectorate and reflected in last night's Prime Time programme".
Meanwhile, Age Action Ireland and Action on Elder Abuse in the UK received a large number of calls yesterday from people concerned about nursing home care.