Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney has insisted overcrowding at accident and emergency units will ease in the coming months as she opened a new facility capable of catering for over 40,000 such attendances each year.
Ms Harney was speaking at the opening of a new €60 million clinical services centre at St Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin.
She said things were moving in the right direction with regard to A&E units.
"I did say some months ago that the HSE should treat it as an emergency and they are," she said.
"They've put a wonderful group of people together who've now visited all of the hospitals and I'm delighted to say we've a 49 per cent improvement this June as opposed to last June and although we haven't gotten there yet, we're going in the right direction."
Ms Harney said she will meet with the A&E taskforce this evening to hear its proposals to ease pressure on services.
The five-storey building at St Vincent's is part of a €250 million redevelopment project at the south city hospital. It will cater for more than 40,000 A&E attendances, 15,000 day-care patients, 10,000 admissions, 120,000 X-rays and some four million pathology tests every year.
It will accommodate the major treatment and diagnostic areas of the hospital and provides a special day-care centre for outpatients having one-day procedures.
The new centre will provide specialist facilities for breast cancer, cystic fibrosis patients, hepatitis C and liver-related problems.