Close to €5 million in taxpayers' money was paid by the health services to Leas Cross nursing home in north Co Dublin before it closed.
This included €3.87 million to pay for contract beds for public patients and €1.02 million in subvention payments to subsidise care given to private patients.
The money was paid between 1999 and 2005.
The figures, which have been obtained from the Health Service Executive (HSE), show most of the money was handed over to Leas Cross in 2003 and 2004 at a time when a number of complaints were being made to the health authorities about care in the home.
It was in October 2003 that consultant psychiatrists working with St Ita's hospital in Portrane expressed concern that three of the initial group of 14 patients it transferred to the home had been referred to Beaumont Hospital and all had been seriously ill. They were concerned about nursing care in the home.
In January 2004, two consultant psychiatrists working with St Ita's expressed concern that seven deaths had occurred since patients were transferred to the home from St Ita's the previous September.
Three of the deaths occurred over the Christmas period.
Leas Cross, a private nursing home in Swords, opened in the late 1990s and closed in August 2005 shortly after RTÉ's Prime Time Investigates sent an undercover reporter into the home and found serious problems.
Prof Des O'Neill, who was asked by the HSE to review 105 deaths at the home, said his overall findings were "consistent with a finding of institutional abuse".
The Leas Cross Dead Relatives Action Group has accused the HSE of bankrolling the home when it knew there were grave problems with the care given to patients there.
After meeting the group on December 18th, at which they sought a full inquiry into what happened at Leas Cross, Minister for Health Mary Harney said she would seek Government approval for a senior counsel to review all the issues relevant to the nursing home.
Describing the action group members she met as "a very impressive group of people", she said "it is my intention to get the Government's approval for the appointment, perhaps of a senior counsel," to review all the documents and evidence and to talk to all the relevant people.
Ms Harney said she was anxious to facilitate the relatives in finding the answers that they sought.