Almost 2,000 hospital bed closures have led to record levels of the overcrowding in emergency departments, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has said.
According to a five-year review of its figures, the organisation said there were 6,624 people on trolleys last month awaiting a hospital bed following a decision to admit.
This was highest level recorded for August and marked a 35 per cent increase on the same period last year when there were 4,924 patients on trolleys awaiting beds.
The figures, released in conjunction with the Health Service Executive, indicated overcrowding levels were up 106 per cent since 2007.
The general secretary Liam Doran said the volume of acute bed closures, the reduction in continuing long term care beds and the cutbacks in community based services were having a devastating impact upon the quality of care available to patients in emergency departments.
"Increasingly we are facing attempts by local hospital managements to deal with this problem by placing additional beds on all in patient wards, notwithstanding the fact that there are closed beds/wards in all of these hospitals. This is simply wrong," he said.
"Regardless of IMF-EU austerity programmes this Government must now review its current policy of constantly cutting back on frontline health services, as a way of saving money, and realise that this is harmful to patient care and simply unsustainable."
The organisation called on statutory regulatory authorities, such as Hiqa, An Bord Altranais and the Medical Council, to inspect hospital emergency wards to ensure staff are able to provide safe care in a “dignified environment”.