The price per week to keep a person in a public nursing home in Ireland - that is a HSE run facility, is on average 60 percent higher than in private nursing home care.

That’s according to new figures released by the HSE on the cost of nursing home care. 

In one case the weekly fee in a HSE run home in the South of the country is €4,082 euro that compares to prices of between 800 and 1000 euro per week in many private facilities in the west.

Speaking to Midwest News today the CEO of Nursing Home Ireland Tadhg Daly said private nursing homes are forced by the State to provide care for half the amount that the HSE pays for its own homes.

He claims that it has taken five years to prise this data out of the HSE and argues that the results show blatant discrimination.

He is now calling on the State to immediately engage with the private and voluntary nursing home sector to provide for the true costs incurred of meeting the high dependency care needs of residents in their homes.