A dedicated task force will be set up to tackle overcrowding in hospital Accident and Emergency departments, the Health Service Executive (HSE) has announced.
The announcement came today after the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) revealed that a record 495 people were lying on trolleys today waiting for inpatient beds in Irish hospitals.
INO general secretary Liam Doran said this was the second day running the record had been broken and added the figures represented an "unprecedented level of crisis".
"The Government and the HSE can no longer state that their plans are working and they must now listen to, and acknowledge, the repeated calls from frontline staff for additional emergency initiatives," he said.
The overcrowding crisis is affecting hospitals in all parts of the country with three hospitals in the Dublin and four outside, including Cavan, Wexford, Cork University and Letterkenny, with at least 30 patients on trolleys.
The HSE has blamed a temporary rise in activity outside Dublin, cases of the winter vomiting bug and the cold weather on the increased pressure at A&E units.
Mr Doran, however, said that these claims were "just not sustainable".
"A world-class health service should be able to plan for, and deal with, cyclical events such as these without incurring the stress and strain on patients and staff that is taking place today," he said.
The INO called on the Government to immediately introduce a number of measures, including the opening of all non acute beds in care of the elderly facilities, the full utilisation of nursing home beds, and the establishement of minor injury units in other hospitals to ease the pressure on major A&E facilities.
Responding to the figures, Fine Gael health spokesman Dr Liam Twomey called Minister for Health Mary Harney's 10-point plan for A&E departments "a flop" and said that patients were suffering as a result of a failed government health policy.
Meanwhile, speaking in the Dail today, Sinn Féin TD Seán Crowe claimed that a patient with a serious heart complaint waited at Tallaght Hospital's A&E department for over ten and a half hours on Monday night before leaving after failing to secure a trolley bed.