The Eastern Regional Health Authority has said it will provide more than 350 additional beds for public patients in its hospitals next year if funding is made available.
The plan, however, within hours of it being announced, was described as "puzzling" by the Irish Nurses Organisation, which said it was unrealistic in the midst of a critical nursing shortage.
The INO general secretary, Mr Liam Doran, said there were already 1,200 vacant nursing posts in the greater Dublin area and the additional beds would require another 600 nurses to be recruited.
"We are not going to add to the already excessive workload of nurses by co-operating with the opening of beds when there is already a shortage of nurses to adequately staff existing bed numbers," he said. "We all want to open extra beds but they can only be opened in the context of adequate professional staffing levels and they are not currently available."
A spokeswoman for the ERHA said there were sufficient nurses to open more than 100 of the beds immediately and it was working with the acute hospitals to recruit additional staff.
Meanwhile, the ERHA has finalised plans to double the size of the accident and emergency department at the Mater Hospital, Dublin and to open two new operating theatres at Dublin's Cappagh Hospital, to reduce numbers on its orthopaedic waiting list.
The authority also announced yesterday it had secured agreement in principle from a number of hospitals in Europe to treat patients on its waiting lists. The ERHA will now establish a project team of medical and paramedical staff from acute hospitals in the eastern region to agree protocols on issues such as follow-up care for patients treated abroad. The list of European hospitals willing to treat Irish patients or their locations have not been disclosed. However, at least 10 hospitals are involved. They will be inspected by the ERHA.
The authority has previously sent patients to Britain and the US for treatment, but the practice is to become more widespread following the publication of the National Health Strategy which provides for the setting up of a treatment purchase fund to buy treatment for public patients from private hospitals here and overseas. The aim is to reduce to three months by the end of 2004 the time public patients spend on waiting lists. The fund will have a budget of £25 million (€31.7 million) next year.
Hospitals identified by the ERHA where extra beds could be provided next year include St Michael's in D·n Laoghaire (40 beds), St Joseph's in Raheny (70), the Mater (60), St James's (124), Beaumont (35) and Tallaght (31).
The authority has also said extra beds could be provided at Beaumont (70 beds), James Connolly Memorial Hospital (62), St Vincent's (120) and the Mater (100) after 2002. A Department of Health spokesman said funding had been committed for the provision of 650 extra beds next year. Their location would be announced when a review of bed capacity in the State's hospitals was published next week, he said.