A consultant in emergency medicine has said patients and staff feel "enormously" let down with the overcrowding crisis being left to happen again this Christmas and New Year.
Dr Emily O'Conor described the horror of passing patients hour after hour in emergency departments waiting to be triaged and not being seen, saying it is "inhumane" to ask people to do this again and again.
Speaking on RTÉ's Brendan O'Connor, she said it is not OK and "we have to start accepting this is not OK in any way".
She also described the "other victims" of this overcrowding crisis, the staff who she said are "broken" by it.
She said the damage being done to people who are expected to work in these circumstances "is breaking staff, young nurses, senior doctors, people are leaving in their droves."
Dr O'Conor said the minister is not wrong to look for more staff to work over the weekends but, she said, staff are already at breaking point.
She said having come through "horrendous" work shifts during Christmas and New Year "you have to say how broken do you have to be before you stop doing it".
She also said that it can be the case when a consultant complains they may be made feel it is their fault and it would lead to questions like: "Why didn't you do this? I think there is a fair bit of that going on."
Meanwhile, Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha has said there is a problem in that there is "nobody to blame" for the overcrowding crisis because healthcare is not under one entity.
"The HSE can blame the department, the department can blame the HSE", she said.
Pilot project at Limerick hospital in bid to tackle overcrowding
The INMO wants Sláintecare to be under the Department of the Taoiseach and its implementation to be within the Department, she said.
"The HSE has to have a function which looks to decisions that can be made regionally, so the regional health authorities must have authority."
She said once we have everybody with a buffer in policymaking and decision-making, the system will never improve.
"So, we need one authority."
She said industrial action is being considered by INMO members because their working conditions are "so bad" and there are concerns around nurses' safety at work.
Ms Ni Sheaghdha said they will be starting that consultation with members on possible industrial action this week and continue this over the coming two weeks.
"We all know what the problem is, we all know what the solutions are. We know there is an inability to act fast enough despite all the issues being raised in the middle of the summer this year both with the HSE and the department by our union. We still have the same problem that was entirely predictable.
She said it is "simply not going enough for staff to put up with it" and they are saying it is not their intention to put up with it.
She said they stand with patients but do no accept the conditions under which they are providing care to them. "We want them to stand with us and also raise this as a national crisis."
"It is simply not acceptable that every single year around this time we have this crisis because the effects of the crisis for patients actually is that they are dying unnececessarily. Now if that isn't a stark enough issue to get all Government action, then I don't know what is."
Ms Ní Sheaghdha said there are very good long term policies drawn up by the nursing policy division that need to be implemented on surgical and medical wards and ED departments.
She said they are currently "unenforceable" due to a lack of funding,
She said there are more senior decisionmakers in the hospitals this weekend and they will wait to see the discharge rate tomorrow.
"To discharge people you need places to discharge them to" adding that they need more nurses in the community.
