The Irish Nurses Organisation is expected to vote today to go ahead with plans for lunchtime protests outside hospitals with overcrowded accident and emergency units.
The rolling protests are due to begin in two weeks and will take place outside different hospitals on different dates.
The union postponed its plan for similar action last month after it met Minister for Health Mary Harney and was promised there would be marked improvement in the A&E crisis during March.
INO's general secretary Liam Doran said yesterday the situation was getting worse and nurses were frustrated at the lack of action.
The average daily number of patients on trolleys in A&E units so far this March was 292 compared to 260 over the same period in February, he said. The figure for yesterday alone was 286 patients on trolleys across the State.
"It is extremely disappointing that despite the Tánaiste's commitments on this matter, the reality is that on the ground, the situation continues to get worse."
Mr Doran also said that hospital management teams had indicated that €70 million in funding promised by Ms Harney to fund her 10-point plan to alleviate the crisis had still not been released.
There was also no sign of employment ceilings being lifted to allow more staff to be employed to deal with the crisis.
"In addition to these difficulties, we have also been advised that any monies that have been allocated to implement the A&E 10-point plan have actually been taken from the original financial allocation for 2005 given to each hospital and will result in other cutbacks later in the year."
The Department of Health insisted yesterday that the €70 million announced by Ms Harney to tackle A&E overcrowding was "additional" money and would not result in hospitals having to make cutbacks in other areas.
A spokesman also said Ms Harney was happy with the roll-out of her plan to date and a number of initiatives would see significant improvements in coming weeks. These included home-care packages and the transfer of high-dependency patients to suitable nursing home care.
The Health Service Executive has disputed the INO's figures for numbers on trolleys in March. Its figures are taken each afternoon whereas the INO's figures were collated each morning when they were likely to be higher. "The HSE is confident that there will be sufficient staff to implement the A&E package within the employment ceiling," it added.