Minister for Health Mary Harney has said the current problems in A&E departments around the country are not caused by a lack of resouces or capacity and need to be tackled at individual hospital level.
"This is not about failure to put in more resources - it's about ensuring they are managed as effectively as possible," said Ms Harney.
"The HSE are going through each hospital process to make sure they work at a hospital level," said Ms Harney. "It's not about resources or capacity. We have as many beds per head of capita in the Irish health care system as they do in Britain."
The dedicated A&E task force announced by the Health Service Executive (HSE) yesterday will focus on 15 of the 35 hospitals providing A&E services and help them identify the particular issues they face.
Ms Harney said the situation was being compounded by the winter vomiting virus that has let to the closure of 100 acute beds.
According to the Irish Nurses' Organisation, there was a record 495 patients waiting on trolleys for admission yesterday morning, but this figure fell to 335 by the morning.
"I welcome the improvement overnight but it's unacceptable to have people waiting overnight for admission to acute beds," said Ms Harney.
The Tánaiste said that long term care of the elderly was an issue, particularly in Dublin and that she will be publishing nursing home legislation in the next few days
to address this.
She highlighted issues such as discharge policy, access to diagnostics and primary care facilities that are contributing to A&E pressure.
She also pointed to a recent "process mapping" exercise carried out by the HSE that found that patients at Cork University Hospital are staying an average one day less for the same procedure than at other hospitals in the country.