Minister for Health Mary Harney said yesterday that the A&E problem had to be treated as a national emergency.
"That means we have to do things that we mightn't do in a different set of circumstances. We have to mobilise all the resources that are available from the voluntary sector, in the public system and in the private system to make sure that nobody is left overnight on a trolley.
"We are providing the resources to make that a reality and the issue now is about putting in place strategies and actions to deliver on that very quickly," she added.
The Irish Nurses Organisation claimed there were 384 patients on trolleys yesterday. The HSE said the figure was 314.
Ms Harney confirmed yesterday that new beds will be assigned immediately to A&E departments to ensure elderly people do not have to sleep overnight on trolleys.
She also said diagnostic departments in hospitals will be asked to remain open in the evenings and at weekends, patients will be discharged each day of the week to keep beds available, and that patients' discharges will be planned so that home care will be ready when they are medically fit for discharge.
Hospitals are also to be given targets for the maximum length of time patients should have to wait in A&E.
The HSE says no patients should be waiting more than 24 hours in any A&E unit for admission to a ward. By next year the target is to be a maximum of six hours. The HSE also says its aim is that no A&E unit should have more than 10 patients waiting for admission to a ward.
Ms Harney said hospital budgets will be linked to hospitals meeting these targets.
It emerged yesterday that a new framework document for solving the A&E crisis drawn up by the HSE identifies hospital-bed capacity and A&E attendance/admission rates as being at the root of the problem.