A special meeting of the Emergency Department Task Force reaffirmed that the country's hospitals are very overcrowded and that there is an increase in elderly people being admitted to acute hospitals.
Speaking after the meeting in Dublin today, INMO General Secretary, Phil Ní Sheaghdha who co-chaired the gathering, said that the health system was increasingly relying on private hospitals for elective procedures.
"We have requested information on what is the Department of Health's plan in respect of making the three elective only hospitals available to the public so that the money that we're now spending buying these beds in the private sector can be better spent."
Ms Ní Sheaghdha noted that the Minister for Health had been invited to the meeting but did not attend due to a diary clash.
"I don't know what would be more important than the crisis in our emergency departments," she said.
She said the meeting had been given reports from all the regions regarding attendances and admissions but said that "what we're waiting for is the plan to do something constructive that will assist ... It's very worrying."
Ms Ní Sheaghdha said that funding needed to be made available to increase capacity and that included staffing.
"Surge capacity is no use without staff and there is an embargo on staffing."
She also expressed concern about the well-being of patients being treated on trolleys - a point which was echoed by the Irish Patients Association who repeated their call for an Irish study to be carried out on the impact on patients of waiting on trolleys for admission to a ward.
Director Stephen McMahon said: "International studies have shown that the longer people wait - particularly once it goes beyond six hours - the poorer the outcomes.
"We need to know the scope of the problem."
He also called on research to uncover how many people who end up in emergency departments do so as a result of delays in seeing a consultant for the first time or because they have been waiting for an operation.
It comes as the latest public hospital waiting list data was published by the National Treatment Purchase Fund.
According to the data, at the end of January 2025, 94,456 patients were waiting for an appointment for their inpatient or day case treatment.
28,095 patients were waiting to receive an appointment for their GI Endoscopy and 569,249 patients are waiting for a first hospital outpatient consultation.
Read more: How are overcrowding figures calculated and which hospitals are most affected?
