Nineteen patients admitted to Dublin's Tallaght Hospital had to be accommodated on trolleys which spanned the full length of a very long corridor in the hospital's accident and emergency department yesterday.
They were among the more than 100 patients on trolleys in A&E departments in the greater Dublin area.
The situation was condemned last night by the Irish Hospital Consultants Association which said A&E overcrowding at this early stage of winter was particularly worrying, especially as the country is at the start of a flu outbreak which has claimed six lives in Britain.
The IHCA secretary general, Mr Finbar Fitzpatrick, said the problem was rooted in the shortage of beds and the inappropriate use of beds that are in the system. Fifteen to 20 per cent of beds are being occupied in the Dublin hospitals by long-stay patients who are fit for discharge but have nowhere to go. "They are there you could say on B&B only, so you have the ridiculous position of patients on trolleys who can't get into hospital and long-stay patients who can't get out," he said.
"We have been complaining about inappropriate occupation of beds since the mid-1990s. We have the solution in our hands but its obviously cheaper to keep patients on trolleys than rent nursing home beds at up to €1,000 a week," he added.
Mr Fitzpatrick said patients were being used "as pawns in the budgets of hospitals" which he described as reprehensible.
The A&E overcrowding was worst at Tallaght hospital yesterday where there were 37 patients on trolleys in the morning. That figure was down to 21 by teatime.
A spokeswoman for the hospital said the situation was so serious the hospital had to go off call for two hours from 10.30 a.m., during which time ambulances were diverted to other hospitals.
Patients on trolleys in the hospital corridor praised staff but condemned the conditions.
On the city's north side, there were 25 patients on trolleys in the Mater hospital and 22 on trolleys in Beaumont hospital yesterday afternoon. There were a further 10 patients on trolleys at James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown where elective surgery has been cancelled for today.
A spokesman for the Dublin Academic Teaching Hospitals said there appeared to be an increase in people attending with respiratory conditions.
However he identified bed capacity and the numbers occupying beds inappropriately as other major factors in the current crisis. Furthermore, beds have had to be closed by some of the hospitals due to funding difficulties.
The difficulties appear to be confined to the Dublin hospitals. Hospitals in Cork and Galway reported only small numbers of patients on trolleys in their A&E units yesterday.