The ban on recruitment imposed by the HSE last month was condemned at a meeting of senior doctors in Dublin on Saturday.
Delegates attending the annual conference of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) were told the ban was affecting services to patients.
IHCA president Dr David O'Keeffe, a consultant radiologist at University College Hospital in Galway, said in his hospital doctors are asked not to order scans after midnight due to a shortage of radiography staff.
Dr Niall Considine, a consultant at Sligo General Hospital, said the fact that four locum consultants had been let go at his hospital meant a significant reduction in services.
The HSE imposed the ban because it has a deficit of at least €230 million but Dr O'Keeffe said he believed the HSE's chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm had either settled for an inadequate budget to start with or mismanaged the resources at his disposal.
"The HSE's decision to continue renting hotels to interview middle managers in Sligo while frontline clinical staff are dismissed shows their double standards. Middle management and bean counting will prevail," he said.
Dr John O'Dea, a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care, said he had been appointed to Limerick Regional Hospital a number of weeks ago to work in an emergency theatre but the theatre was still closed as not enough nurses had been taken on to open it.
"It appals me to see that things which I was appointed for are not funded for . . . There is actually an empty theatre which is not used, not worked, not staffed and basically can't work," Dr O'Dea said.
Meanwhile, the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) is to be asked to visit and inspect all hospitals to ensure proper security measures are in place to protect staff.
Delegates voted to make the request to the HSA in view of continuing attacks on staff, particularly consultant psychiatrists.
Dr Liam Watters, a consultant psychiatrist in Wexford, said a consultant had been stabbed by an outpatient in a Dublin hospital in the past year and a female colleague of his had a frightening experience when an outpatient threatened her.
"In June of this year a patient sent a letter and numerous text messages to staff in my hospital stating that they were going to kill me," he said.
"Whilst I'm prepared to accept that there are certain hazards attached to psychiatry . . . I am not prepared to accept the lack of proper security measures . . . I know that the male consultant attacked recently didn't have a working panic button at his disposal."
Dr Roy Browne, a psychiatrist at St Brendan's Hospital in Dublin, said it was becoming increasingly difficult to even identify the people in the bureaucracy that is the HSE who could make the changes required.
Dr Eleanor Corcoran, a psychiatrist in Letterkenny, said mental health facilities across the country were not adequately resourced to deal with people with a history of violence. Consequently, psychiatrists, other staff and other patients were at risk.
"We are having dangerous patients in hospital without appropriate resources to manage them . . . it needs to be addressed urgently," she said.
Meanwhile, the conference also condemned the lack of funding provided by Government for the implementation of the mental health strategy A Vision for Change, the delay in implementing a national cervical cancer screening programme and the continuing overcrowding in some A&E units.
Dr Aidan Gleeson, an A&E consultant at Beaumont Hospital on the northside of Dublin, said a colleague told him he came into work a few days ago and found 40 patients on trolleys.
Two of them had life threatening conditions and had been left on chairs for hours.