The Medical Board at University Hospital Limerick has warned that the risks to patient care at the hospital "remain intolerable and unacceptable".
Professor Joe Devlin, Consultant physician and Chairperson of the Board, said the situation persists despite repeated warnings from frontline clinicians, hospital management, national oversight bodies and patient advocates.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, he said: "Currently there are 18 patients who are admitted to the hospital but who are still lodging in the emergency department because there aren't beds... to take them. This is par for the course and that's really the issue."
He added that "there are trolleys in corridors all around the hospital, there are some in our peripheral hospitals as well."
"The problem has clearly been identified here. We do not have enough acute beds in the mid west," he said.
The Medical Board has pointed to continued severe overcrowding, excessive trolley numbers, delayed admissions, exhausted staff, and an emergency system operating without the acute capacity required to safely meet demand across the region.
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The board has called on Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill to provide emergency funding, to deal with patient safety risks, including the urgent recruitment of extra consultants, non-consultant hospital doctors, nurses and other staff.
It wants the immediate establishment of a fully-empowered HSE Mid West Development Board, with local leadership and full authority to drive the delivery of the new hospital project.
Prof Devlin said the terms of reference for this board should guarantee a full, all-services acute hospital with a minimum of 400 beds in Phase 1 and long-term expansion capacity of at least 1,000 beds, co-located with the new maternity hospital.
"Overcrowding is a huge problem. We need model-four or model-three beds, which are the beds you can go to if you've got pneumonia or appendicitis or heart attack, you can't have those sorts of conditions treated in beds like the ones we have in Ennis or Nenagh or St John's," he said.
"It's nonsense, in my view to say we can't work on our new acute beds because we haven't finalised our planning for these hospitals.
"Speaking of those beds, what's required to use those beds properly is a massive expansion of staff. At the moment, we're supposed to be implementing the public-only contract starting evening clinics, Saturday clinics.
"But at the moment, if we do that, we have to take somebody out of a Wednesday clinic, and that's nonsense, because we want to be providing more care, not just shifting it around."
The Medical Board also called for the suspension of all HSE staff ceilings and related restrictions across the mid west until patient safety risks are stabilised and the region reaches parity with other regions.
In a statement, the Department of Health said that the Government is working to address the challenges facing acute care in the mid west.
It said that in December 2025, the Minister for Health, having considered the expert advice from HIQA, received Government support to progress with a blend of the proposed HIQA options necessary to respond to the challenges in the mid west.
The department said that the minister remains focused on ensuring that the recommendations arising from HIQA's assessment are implemented in a timely and coordinated manner, and that people in the mid west have access to safe, high‑quality, and reliable care.
Minister says Ennis and UHL must develop together
Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has said the development of services at Ennis Hospital and University Hospital Limerick must happen in tandem and not as an "either or" situation.
Minister Carroll MacNeill was in Clare meeting campaigners from the Friends of Ennis Hospital group.
She was asked about a statement by consultants at University Hospital Limerick, who said they are operating in "permanent crisis mode" as they await the building of a new acute hospital "as a matter of urgency".
The doctors and surgeons said there has not yet been a development board established to progress delivery of the project, and questioned why this could not be done in parallel with planning for existing services in Nenagh, Ennis and St John's Hospital in Limerick city.
Responding, the minister said pressure on UHL could be eased by expanding services in Clare.
"It's not an either or situation. It must be both," she said.
"So our frustration, for me, would be, for example, if a patient came here to Ennis to the medical assessment unit on a Tuesday afternoon and their urgent CT scan couldn't be read and they had to travel to Limerick, that puts additional pressures on exactly those hospital consultants in Limerick.
"So at the moment, those CT scans are only being read from Limerick for here in the morning. That needs to happen in the afternoon as well.
"So I can imagine that those consultants in Limerick who are under pressure will be even more enthusiastic that I make sure that that pressure is taken off Limerick by delivering more services in Clare at the same time as developing the acute hospital in Limerick."
The minister said it was important to take a regional focus that had previously been absent.
"I'm not going to perpetuate a focus exclusively on Limerick," she said.
"We can all do more than one thing at the same time. We can develop services in Ennis and develop services in Limerick."
Ms Carroll MacNeill also said she would ensure Clare representatives are included on the hospital development board when it is established.
"There is already good integration between Ennis and Limerick. So it's never either or. It's always both," she said.
"Anybody who puts it in an either or sort of way, I would say, needs to consider the whole regional context and how we're getting to people where they are."
The minister said she had spent the past two months gathering information following the purchase of a site in Raheen for a new hospital campus linked to UHL.
"I'm here exactly two months to the day from when we purchased a site in Raheen for a hospital campus at UHL in Limerick," she said.
"In that time, I've received detailed consideration from the HSE on how to develop hospital services.
"I have asked them to go back now and develop also an equivalent position in relation to community services, and indeed in virtual care."
She said there had been a greater focus on the region in recent months than ever before, but insisted it must remain balanced.
