The author of the report into the Leas Cross nursing home scandal said today that the health service needs to think hard about what it's "doing for services for older pople".
Prof Des O'Neill called for more staffing and funding for nursing homes to prevent another Leas Cross situation occuring again.
Prof O'Neill was also critical that there are no plans for specialist geriatric units in the building plans of the Mater Hospital, St Vincent's and St James's.
"So there is major failure which ends up being a form of discrimination against older people," Prof O'Neill said.
Prof Des O'Neill
"There would be absolute uproar if they left the paedriatric unit in an old victorian building or if they didn't include it in at all," he added.
This is the first time Prof O'Neill has publicly spoken following the publication of his report in the Leas Cross where 105 deaths were detected between 2002 and 2004. The home closed in 2005.
In his report he said that the that the level of care provided to residents constituted "institutional abuse".
Today he said he was not apportioning blame to anyone in particular for the "system failures" at Leas Cross, but, he said the HSE needed to look at the systems and see why they had failed.
Welcoming Prof O'Neill's remarks the Irish Nursing Homes Organisation chief executive Tadhg Daly said: "Prof O'Neill is absolutely correct in saying that without meaningful change in the nursing home sector, we could see cases like Leas Cross happen again."