The Emergency Department at University Hospital Limerick is supporting a population of over 425,000 people and is the only hospital in the country that is facing consistently high levels of overcrowding, according to the Mid-West Hospital Campaign Group.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has said there were 120 admitted patients waiting for a bed a UHL this morning, down from a record high of 150 yesterday.
Across the country, the INMO said there were 624 admitted patients waiting for a hospital bed.
The Health Service Executive's figures from its daily Emergency and Urgent care list puts the number of patients waiting for a bed at UHL as of 8am at 73.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Clare co-ordinator of the campaign group Noeleen Moran said they have told "time and time again" that the Government will not examine the reopening of even one emergency department, because the clinical advice does not exist to support it.
She said that this is the position that many political parties "are hiding behind currently".
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Ms Moran said: "When you consider the geographical spread of the midwest and patients are already travelling over an hour before they enter into the chaos of the corridors of the emergency department of UHL, they're already at a disadvantage before they go in those doors.
"And we know as well that for every 82 patients left between six to eight hours, waiting on trolleys, at least one patient will die, and this is a very, very serious situation".
Ms Moran said the Minister for Health is not powerless to act and added: "We'd like to know who the clinicians advising the minister are and what this advice is currently, because nobody can stand over what is happening here currently at the moment".
The group has described the situation at UHL as "really, really dangerous for patients to be left in".
INMO General Secretary Phil Ni Sheaghdha said nurses are witnessing a "high level of anger and burnout" among the public as they wait to be seen in hospitals.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Colm O'Mongain, she said colleagues in Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown have described how some "surge areas [that are] now being used for patients are so inappropriate."
She said the situation is also below standard in other hospitals.
"We had examples last night of a gym being repurposed very quickly, sheets from beds being placed between patients, hanging between patients to try and give them some privacy, no toilet facilities available.
"Very elderly people expressing that they are unable to walk down a long corridor to access a toilet. I mean this is inhumane," she said.
Ms Ni Sheaghdha said that when the HSE does not plan "this is the immediate type of reactionary solutions" that hospitals are trying to find "because there simply isn't enough capacity."
She said the HSE confirmed to the INMO yesterday that their predicted bed increase for this year is "only 60 additional acute beds."
She said there is an admission now that this problem will continue until they get community services up to the level that Slaintecare had envisaged "long before now," adding it is impossible to provide elective care and have acute emergencies running at the same time with the current level of overcrowding.
