There were 16 patients on trolleys at Mercy University Hospital in Cork this morning who had been admitted to the hospital, but for whom no beds were available.
It is an improvement on recent days, but staff say conditions for patients in the emergency department are unacceptable.
Mercy University Hospital's ED is one of two in Cork city. It is also one of the busiest in the country.
Up to 35 patients per day who had already been admitted have had to wait on trolleys at the hospital because there were no beds for them.
Emma Murphy has been nursing in the Mercy Hospital's emergency department for five years.
She acknowledges that today's figures for the number of patients on trolleys in the emergency department are an improvement, but she says overcrowding there is getting worse each winter.
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"We have to provide ward-level care in the emergency department with no facilities," Emma told RTÉ News.
"It's inhuman to leave an elderly patient lying on a trolley. We have nowhere to bring them to change them. We have nowhere to wash them. We have nowhere to look after them - even looking for the basics of equipment can be a struggle."
Emma says colleagues who have worked in the ED at the Mercy Hospital for more than 25 years have never seen the overcrowding there as bad.
"All I can say is that it's getting progressively worse year-on-year.
"We are nursing more and more admitted patients on trolleys in the emergency department, with no facilities to look after them properly. There are much more of them; they are sicker; they need more care.
"We are looking after elderly patients on trolleys, lying toe-to-toe, back-to-back along the corridor, along with patients who are left in chairs because we physically don't have the trolleys to put them on."
Patient Suzanne O'Driscoll from the North Mall in Cork city was admitted to the Mercy Hospital with a chest complaint. She spent two days on a trolley before she got a bed on a ward. She has been a patient at the hospital for more than a week now, and is likely to spend another week there before she will be fully recovered and released.
"Conditions inside are unbelilevable. Staff are run ragged," Ms O'Driscoll said. "Every single bed is full - it's really overcrowded."
The Irish Nurses' Organisation met management at the Mercy Hospital today. The INMO says more beds and more staff are required to ease overcrowding.
INMO Assistant Director of Industrial Relations Mary Power described the meeting as a step in the right direction and acknowledged that management was implementing all initiatives it could in order to ease over-crowding at the hospital.
She said agreement had been reached with management on the purchase of additional session time and access to diagnostics from private operators in the healthcare sector.
She said 15 so-called "escalation beds" had been opened and elective surgery was being reviewed on a daily basis.
Elective surgery is being carried out at the Mercy Hospital based on clinical need, with just two surgeries carried out today, she said.
All sides are aware, though, that cancellation of elective surgery has lasting, knock-on effects for waiting lists so, while pressure on the emergency department at the Mercy Hospital and at other hospitals throughout the country might ease through the cancellation of elective surgery, long term problems will persist if cancellation of elective surgery is used as a mechanism to relieve overcrowding in the emergency department.
