According to figures supplied by the HSE, around 7,000 out of the 28,500 people in full time nursing home care are private patients.

They currently obtain 41pc tax relief on nursing home fees of at least €1,000 per week but when new nursing home fee legislation is introduced in 14 months time, this relief will be cut to 20pc.

Fine Gael TD Fergus O'Dowd last night said these pensioners would be paying up to €70m a year more for their nursing home care as a result of the Budget cutback.

""Elderly people who are in long term care and who don't have any subsidy will be absolutely crucified," he said.

According to the Department of Health's long stay statistics, 23.6pc of people in private nursing home beds are aged 80-84, 26.6pc are aged 85-89, 16.5pc are aged 90-95 and 4.3pc are aged 95 and over.

Mr O'Dowd estimated that elderly people who currently pay €50,000 annually in fees for a private nursing home bed would only be able to claim back €10,000 of this in tax relief instead of €20,000.

"These are very elderly citizens and two thirds of them are women.

"So you're asking them to fork out an extra €10,000 a year -- it's absolutely unacceptable," he said.

The changes are due to come into effect in January 2010 when Health Minister Mary Harney's "Fair Deal" scheme is introduced.

It will allow elderly people to pay 80pc of their weekly pension (plus 15pc of the sale price of their home after their death) to cover the cost of their nursing home bed. But Mr O'Dowd said that the scheme would be restricted to "high dependency" cases, and would not include the 7,000 elderly people in private beds.

"The only thing Finance Minister Brian Lenihan can do is that he can exempt people in long term care from the tax changes," he said.

Misunderstood

But a spokesman for Health Minister Mary Harney said that Mr O'Dowd had "fundamentally misunderstood" the Fair Deal scheme.

"When it's implemented, it will provide much better support for people than any other arrangement. It represents a huge commitment on the part of the State to support older people in longer term residential care," he said.

However, he admitted that not all people would be eligible for the Fair Deal scheme.

"There will always be an option for people to pay for private nursing home care," he said.

The 10,000 people currently in public nursing homes beds will not be forced to enter the Fair Deal scheme and another 4,000 people receiving a weekly state grant of up to €300 -- known as a partial subvention -- towards their care will not be affected either.

However, these will only get the 20pc tax relief (instead of 41pc) on their private top up payments for their beds and will still face bigger bills