Dozens of beds are lying empty in two Dublin hospitals while patients are left on trolleys in the accident and emergency (A&E)departments of other city hospitals, it has emerged.
More than 30 beds, funded by the Eastern Regional Health Authority, are lying empty at Peamount Hospital and several others lie empty at St Joseph's Hospital in Raheny.
The vast majority of patients treated at St Joseph's Hospital - a public hospital with 70 beds bought by the State at a cost of some €12.6 million in 2001 - are private patients, it has also emerged.
The disclosure came as nursing unions met the management of Dublin's Beaumont Hospital yesterday to discuss the crisis which erupted in its A&E department last weekend which resulted in more than 40 patients waiting on chairs and trolleys for beds in the unit.
It also resulted in ambulances waiting up to three hours to get their trolleys back.
The meeting with management was described as bitterly disappointing by the Irish Nurses' Organisation and SIPTU, and they have requested the intervention of the Labour Relations Commission.
There were 11 patients on trolleys in Beaumont's A&E unit last night and a shortage of beds at the hospital has resulted in the cancellation of further elective procedures planned for today.
Beaumont management said the problem was partly due to the fact that 83 of its beds were occupied by long-stay patients and by patients in need of rehabilitation who had nowhere to be discharged to.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said yesterday he hoped to unveil later this week a "modest enough package" to deal with this issue of long-stay patients.
He indicated he was "not entirely satisfied" that optimum use was being made of St Joseph's Hospital. He will be meeting with the Northern Area Health Board, which manages the hospital, and the Eastern Regional Health Authority, which funds it, later this week to discuss this and the ongoing overcrowding in A&E units.
He conceded the hospitals had financial problems this year but ruled out further allocations for them.
A spokesman for the Northern Area Health Board said it was working to increase the number of public patients treated at St Joseph's, a former private hospital. He also said that because the hospital did mostly elective work, it would not be unusual for beds to be vacant at the hospital at weekends.
A caller to The Irish Times yesterday claimed most beds at the hospital were vacant last weekend when Beaumont was in crisis. And a source close to Peamount Hospital said there were 18 beds vacant in a medical ward in the hospital and a further 13 vacant in its infectious diseases ward, which had single rooms that could be used to alleviate overcrowding elsewhere.
A spokeswoman for the ERHA said it would look at all issues around appropriate bed use when it meets the Department of Health tomorrow.
Mr Philip McAnenly, industrial relations officer with the INO, said he was not at all confident in the willingness of Beaumont hospital management to deal with its A&E crisis. SIPTU's Mr Oliver McDonagh said if intolerable overcrowding recurred, his members would consider industrial action.
The hospital, in a statement, claimed it had been extremely active in trying to resolve the problem over the last 18 months. "We respect the decision of the INO and SIPTU to refer this to the LRC, although we believe this is untimely."