President of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association Dr Mary McCaffrey has called for the provision of more acute hospital beds at the annual conference in Mullingar.
She said a leaflet would be distributed to patients in hospitals highlighting the fact that if the Government honoured its commitment to provide 3,000 extra hospital beds, patients would have a reduced risk of contracting MRSA and other hospital acquired infections. They would not be kept on trolleys and would have shorter waiting times for planned admissions.
A shortage of beds meant pregnant women at Portlaoise General Hospital had to be accommodated in beds in waiting rooms in recent weeks and gynaecological surgery had been "pruned to a minimum", she added.
She added that the day care unit at Letterkenny General Hospital had been turned into a medical ward because of a beds shortage, which was "shameful".
"It is outrageous that this cash-rich country should have 25 per cent fewer hospital beds now than it had 20 years ago," she said.
She went on to support a motion condemning the failure of the HSE to implement certain recommendations in the Lourdes Hospital Inquiry report, which investigated the high number of Caesarean hysterectomies carried out at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, during the 1980s and 1990s.
Dr Dominic Ó Brannagáin, a consultant at the hospital, said only the budget-neutral recommendations in the report, which was published last March, had been implemented.
"The failure of the Minister for Health and the CEO of the HSE to implement these recommendations in full compromises patient safety on a day-to-day basis," he said.
The hospital had no audit department and although bookings at its maternity unit were up, the hospital was down 30 per cent on its baseline midwifery numbers.
"In the last two years since our director of nursing resigned, management have failed to replace her," he added.
When Minister for Health Mary Harney arrived at the conference she said a number of recommendations in the report were being implemented.
She added that a national audit facility would be provided in a new maternity unit opening in Cork next year, so that if problems such as those that arose in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital arose again, "they would be picked up much more quickly".