The UL Hospitals Group has apologised to patients saying the Emergency Department at the region's main hospital "is not fit for purpose".
It's reported that a whistleblower described conditions at the Dooradoyle facility as "absolute hell" and also noted that nurses and doctors were seeing an average of 220 patients per day.
In response, UL Hospitals Group says it has long acknowledge that the ED is too small for the volumes of patients attending and is one of the busiest in the country with around 60,000 patients attending annually.
The hospital says a number of measures have been taken to ease overcrowding including the hiring of additional staff and the provision of 40 additional beds, while a new state-of-the-art ED, which will be triple the size is on course to be opened in 2017.
