The Minister for Health has said 199 additional hospital beds will be available by the end of the month, as the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation says the level of hospital overcrowding has reached a record level.
The INMO said there were 760 patients waiting for admission to a bed today, surpassing the previous record based on INMO data of 714 patients, which was set on 12 March 2018.
The Health Service Executive TrolleyGar figures put the scale of overcrowding at a lower figure of 563 patients.
Unlike the INMO figures, the TrolleyGar figures do not give the number of patients placed on wards who are waiting for admission for a bed, having already been admitted from an Emergency Department.
Minister Simon Harris said 50 additional beds were opening today in a number of locations across the country, with more to open at the end of next week.
He said some of the beds were in hospitals and some were in the community setting.
"The ones that are in the community setting will provide an opportunity for people to be moved from an acute hospital into perhaps convalescence or respite when appropriate," he said.
The minister also said this week would be very demanding and challenging for the health service, but he believes flu levels have peaked.
"I expect this week to be a very demanding week for our health service. It looks like flu levels have peaked. We will know more about that in the coming days. But there is still an awful lot of flu circulating in the system," he said.
Mr Harris said he expects more than 600 patients will be discharged today, but that "there is no doubt that when you're numbers get to where they are today, it takes a number of days to de-escalate. So this will be a very challenging week".
Meanwhile, the HSE has apologised to those affected by the overcrowding in the country's hospitals.
In a statement this evening, the executive said it was making "every effort manage and improve the situation for our patients and our staff".
The HSE said that, according to its Special Delivery Unit’s TrolleyGAR figures, as of 2pm today there were 467 patients waiting on a trolley, which was a reduction from 543 at 8am this morning.
It said some hospitals had made the decision to restrict visiting in the interests of both patients and visitors.
The HSE said the current flu season spiked over Christmas and the New Year and was now at levels "significantly ahead of those experienced last year".
The HSE's Dr Kevin Kelleher, Assistant National Director of Public and Child Health, said the best way to prevent flu is by getting vaccinated.
University Hospital Limerick has also broken the daily record for an individual hospital, with 92 patients on trolleys, according to the INMO. The previous highest figure was 82.
The union has called for a major incident protocol to be adopted across the country, as was done in March 2018.
This would see all non-emergency admissions stopped, elective procedures cancelled and extra bed capacity sourced from the private and public sectors.
The figures come as SIPTU said overcrowding in emergency departments is causing chaos for ambulance staff.
The trade union said that some ambulance staff were reporting delays in some cases of between three-and-a-half and seven hours outside emergency departments to hand over patients and be released back to service.
SIPTU Health Division Organiser Paul Bell said the chaos was starving communities of a safe and functioning ambulance service.
He said that the problem was also resulting in many ambulance staff continuously being exposed to long shift over-runs and unsatisfactory rest and break times.
The union has called on the HSE and the Department of Health to agree a protocol for the handover of patients at emergency departments.
The HSE's National Director of Acute Hospitals has said we need to recognise that the system was running at "about 94% occupancy before Christmas".
Speaking to RTÉ's News At One, Liam Woods said it was now running at "above 100% occupancy", which he acknowledged was "not a desirable position".
The General Secretary of the INMO has criticised the deliberate "slow down in recruitment that has been imposed by the HSE nationally".
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Phil Ní Sheaghdha said this has put hospitals under severe pressure.
She claimed that hospitals in Cork had a number of nurses on panels in October, but were not sanctioned to put them on payroll until the end of December.
This policy, she said, means hospitals are unable to open beds and it "has to go".
Ms Ní Sheaghdha said a number of measures announced to ease pressure in Cork should help.
These include seeking additional bed capacity in the private sector.
Ms Ní Sheaghdha said the INMO has asked the HSE to issue a statement to reassure the public that if they attend EDs they will be seen.
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This evening, the Director of Industrial Relations at the INMO, Tony Fitzpatrick, said the situation was "highly predictable".
He told RTÉ's Six One News that it comes down to "bad planning and inaction" on the part of the HSE and the Government.
He said the HSE did not take the necessary action, did not put in place the bed capacity required, and did not recruit the staff needed.
He said the 760 patients on trolleys have been seen by doctors and nurses in A&E and are in need of hospital care.
"But we don't have the staff to care for them appropriately and they're now head to toe on corridors, doubled up in cubicles, only separated by a curtain. It's completely undignified and inhumane, and it's inappropriate that they're being looked after in those spaces."
