The Minister for Health and Children has invited the main nursing unions to meet him in an effort to avert industrial action in accident and emergency (A&E) departments.
Both the Irish Nurses' Organisation and SIPTU are balloting their members on industrial action over conditions in A&E departments.
On Tuesday night the Minister announced the establishment of a "forum" to identify urgent measures to reduce overcrowding. The forum would be made up of medical, nursing and other hospital personnel and patient advocacy groups.
Yesterday, however, Department officials contacted the two main nursing unions to invite them to a separate meeting with the Minister.
Although the unions will meet the Minister, they will continue to ballot for industrial action.
Hospital consultants yesterday rejected complaints by the Irish Nurses' Organisation that they were contributing to the problem in A&E.
The INO had alleged that consultants were reluctant to cancel elective (planned) admissions when beds were needed for emergency cases.
Mr Fintan Hourihan, the Irish Medical Organisation's director of industrial relations, said 70 per cent of admissions to hospitals were emergency admissions.
The fundamental problem arose from the 20 per cent loss of acute beds since the 1980s, he maintained. It was not helpful for anyone to create divisions between workers in the health services. The IMO welcomed the establishment of the forum and would play an active role in it but the solution to the problem was more beds and more people to staff them, he added.
Consultants "sympathise totally" with the frustration felt by nurses in A&E departments, the assistant secretary general of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association, Mr Donal Duffy, said.
This frustration was shared by consultants, he said. But he would reject absolutely any assertion by the INO that consultants were trying to save elective beds at the expense of emergency cases.
The first priority of hospitals was to provide beds for emergency cases and consultants played a full part in this.
Meanwhile, Mr Liam Doran, general secretary of the Irish Nurses' Organisation, said that where there was a private hospital beside a public hospital, beds in the private hospital should be contracted to treat emergency cases where appropriate.
Mr Oliver McDonagh, SIPTU's national nursing official, said the union would await the outcome of the meeting with the Minister in relation to industrial action but would continue to ballot its members.
The Minister, when announcing the establishment of the forum, also pointed to the shortage of acute hospital beds. He referred to an earlier announcement that an extra €65m is being provided to commission 709 extra beds in public hospitals.
"This is the first phase of the provision of 3,000 additional acute hospital beds by 2011," Mr Martin said.