Reaction: The Government's plans to set up an independent body to inspect public and private nursing homes will not be ready to go before the Oireachtas until the autumn, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has said.
Currently the Health Service Executive has 10 inspection teams to inspect 450 private nursing homes, although one-fifth of them were visited only once last year.
The inspection teams, which reported to a variety of health boards before the end of last year, are not full-time units, because the staff, including public health doctors and environmental health officers, have other duties.
Questioned in the Dáil, the Taoiseach said the Prime Time programme had uncovered "shocking treatment of vulnerable people".
"No excuse should be offered to defend what happened," Mr Ahern said.
The legislation setting up the inspectorate will also ensure that inspection reports can be published, to inform choices by patients and families.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny revealed that his party had warned the Department of Health and Children more than a year ago about another Dublin nursing home, but nothing had happened.
Mr Kenny said one woman had been taken in August 2001 from a home to Beaumont Hospital with "the worst bed sores I have ever seen", according to a doctor who inspected her there.
The doctor said she had "bad pressure sores with blistering on the heels and broken skin with large excoriated areas on the buttocks, which in my opinion at that time were the worst pressure sores I had seen.
"She was extremely debilitated on admission as evidenced by her dehydration and her bad pressure sores.
"I was surprised that she made a good recovery and survived the admission," the doctor added.
Last night Mr Kenny said the type of information revealed in the programme on Monday night has been available to the Government since early 2004.
Agencies working with the elderly, as well as groups representing nurses and nursing-home owners, also expressed alarm yesterday at the content of the programme.
Age Action Ireland spokesman Paul Murray said the present system of inspections was "hapless". He called for a vigorous inspectorate, one that called day or night to nursing homes, not by appointment.
The president of the Human Rights Commission, Maurice Manning, said he was deeply concerned at some of the issues raised in the programme.
"The Human Rights Commission from its inception has indicated its concern that the elderly, especially those in long-stay care may be particularly vulnerable to human rights abuses," he said.
It had expressed concern at the system of inspections for private nursing homes in a report as far back as 2002, he added.
The National Disability Authority said it was deplorable that any person would be treated in the manner that was exposed in the programme.
The Irish Nurses' Organisation condemned the conditions highlighted on the programme as "disgraceful and indefensible" and said it feared this might not be an isolated incident.
The Irish Association of Directors of Nursing and Midwifery, representing more than 200 senior nurse executives in the health services, said it deplored the appalling conditions revealed by Prime Time.
It was imperative that an independent inspectorate and an ombudsman for older persons be established, it said.