Some 100,000 blank postcards on which members of the public are encouraged to convey their comments on conditions in hospital A&E units are being distributed across the State.
The postcards have been printed by the Irish Nurses' Organisation as part of its campaign to have overcrowding in A&E units addressed. It has urged people to return the postcards, when completed, to the INO and it will forward them in bulk to Minister for Health Mary Harney. No stamp is required.
"Politicians have got to listen to the general public. They are in denial about the extent of this problem," the organisation's general secretary Liam Doran said.
"The INO has never said there is a simple solution. Our concern is that we are getting deeper into a black hole."
It was incredible, Mr Doran said, that at a time when 2,400 more beds were needed in the health service to comply with the Government's own health strategy, the Department of Health returned €159 million in unspent funding in 2005 to the Exchequer.
It was also appalling, he added, that some 500 beds in hospitals and nursing homes were closed yesterday at a time when there were 347 patients on trolleys. Some 100 of these beds, he said, were in Leas Cross nursing home in Dublin, which closed last August after the HSE withdrew patients from it following concerns about the way they were being cared for.
The postcard campaign is backed by Patients Together.
The HSE said it counted 246 patients on trolleys yesterday and claimed the INO figure on closed beds was inaccurate. It said that, for example, no beds were closed at Connolly hospital in Blanchardstown.
The INO had said 56 beds there were closed. It added that the resolution of A&E overcrowding was one of its key priorities.