A&E crisis: Fully staffed and funded beds are lying idle at one Dublin hospital at a time when there are more than 100 patients on trolleys in overcrowded accident and emergency departments in other hospitals in the eastern region every day of the week.
Even management at Peamount Hospital, where up to 25 beds are idle, has said it makes no sense to have the beds empty.
And Prof Luke Clancy, consultant respiratory physician who treats patients at Peamount, said the fact that the beds were being left idle was "probably contributing" to the overcrowding in A&E units in other hospitals.
There were 103 patients on trolleys in A&E units in eight hospitals in the eastern region yesterday, according to the Irish Nurses Organisation.
The empty beds are in St Theresa's ward in Peamount, a ward which treats patients with acute respiratory illnesses including pneumonia.
Prof Clancy said that up to half of patients presenting in A&E had respiratory illnesses and often required a minimum hospital stay of 10 days.
If the empty beds were used, they would free up up to 75 beds for short-stay patients in some of the main Dublin hospitals, he said.
However, while the hospital's chief executive, Robin Mullan, accepted the beds should not be idle, he said there was no evidence this was contributing to problems in A&E units elsewhere.
"We are not an acute hospital," he said, adding that it was not appropriate to use the idle beds to treat acutely ill patients.
The hospital was therefore trying to move to a situation, he said, where the beds would be used for rehabilitation and long- term care rather than for chest patients. The plan has met with opposition.