The Health Service Executive was paying more than €2 million annually of taxpayers' money to the Leas Cross nursing home in north Dublin, relatives of those who died in the home claimed yesterday.
Tony Mullins of the Leas Cross Death Relatives Action Group said the HSE "bankrolled" the home when it knew there were grave problems with the care given to patients.
An internal report for the HSE in April 2005 noted that of the 96 residents in the home 48 were fully paid for and 27 were partially paid for by the HSE.
"The withdrawal of financial support by the HSE would most certainly have led to changes in the standard of care in Leas Cross," he said. "They could have shut the facility at any time by shutting down the finance. They, therefore, do not have the excuse of not having adequate powers even if the law is deficient in many respects."
He questioned why this wasn't done and whether there was any political patronage for Leas Cross. "Our conclusion is that for some reason unknown, the HSE supported both the Leas Cross owners and management in the operation of a delinquent nursing facility. As a consequence many aged Irish citizens had painful and miserable end of life experiences and their immediate families were devastated."
Mr Mullins told a press conference in Dublin that the HSE had lied to families about the existence of serious problems in the home. Individuals were responsible and had to be held accountable. "Our health service will never be reformed nor become effective until a culture of personal accountability is established. We now have a culture within the HSE where in theory everybody is to blame and effectively nobody is held accountable," he said.
Leas Cross, a private nursing home in Swords, closed in August 2005 shortly after Prime Time Investigates sent an undercover reporter into the home and found serious problems.
Mr Mullins said the HSE gave the impression it had been taken by surprise by what the programme showed. This was "outrageous" as a number of people had complained to the HSE about care there. His own family complained in January 2004 about care given to his mother at Leas Cross.
A HSE investigation of that complaint in July 2004 found nursing care at the home deficient under a number of headings including staffing, health and safety and medication administration.
And in October 2004 Jack Buckley, then director of nursing in the Northern Area Health Board, wrote to the Mullins family saying the board's intention was to work with Leas Cross and to help them deliver the highest quality of care.
The letter also confirmed that the HSE's own action in transferring a large number of extra patients to Leas Cross in 2003 had put "added pressure on staffing resources".
Another report on the home carried out by Martin Hynes, he said, showed there were issues around its registration in the first place. Mr Mullins said there was overwhelming evidence that Leas Cross breached regulations from the time it opened in 1998 but no legal action was ever taken against it.
The action group now wants a thorough investigation. A report on deaths at the home carried out by Prof Des O'Neill and published recently has already been passed to gardaí.