The president of the Irish Gerontological Society, Dr Cillian Twomey, has called on the Government to introduce an inspection system of long-stay care facilities for the elderly in the public and private systems.
Speaking after the annual policy meeting of the society yesterday, Dr Twomey said he believed that while staff in public community nursing centres were doing phenomenal work, some facilities "left a lot to be desired".
Under current legislation only private sector nursing homes are inspected by health authorities.
Dr Twomey, a consultant geriatrician to Cork University Hospital, said he understood that the frequency of such inspection visits to private nursing homes in certain parts of the country was lower than required by law.
He said he was shocked at the revelations in the RTÉ Prime Time investigation into the Leas Cross nursing home in Dublin.
However, he said it would be unfair to tar everyone in the sector with the same brush.
He urged that an inspectorate be established to look at all forms of long-stay care facilities.
A second leading consultant geriatrician, Dr J Bernard Walsh of St James's Hospital, said the Government's system of providing enhanced subvention or grants to families who secure private nursing home care for their relatives "was not working" and was the cause of some of the problems in acute hospitals.
Dr Walsh said that in 1997 most long-stay care beds in Dublin were in the public sector. Over recent years a number of these had been closed, partly as a result of a shortage of nurses.
He said 63 per cent of patients requiring long-stay care were either not availing of the enhanced subvention system or were excluded from it.
This had led to growing numbers of patients in hospitals awaiting a long-stay bed in a public facility.
