A further 50 beds in the Mater Hospital in Dublin are to close as it emerged this morning that the hospital faced a €18 million shortfall this year.
Confirmation of the closures follows news yesterday that a 30-bed ward in the hospital has been forced to close for a second week in succession.
Last week, the Mater, which is one of the biggest hospitals in the State, also closed its 22-bed five-day ward.
According to Mr Donal Duffy of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association(IHCA) the budget allocation for the hospital this year - €150 million - is exactly the same as last year and does not take the rate of medical inflation into account.
The result, Mr Duffy said, is that there will be a reduction of 10 per cent in the number of procedures carried out in the hospital which, if replicated in hospitals nationally, would mean 80,000 people would not receive the medical attention they require.
Additionally, the board of the hospital has said that there will be no recruitment for the foreseeable future so that any vacant post that arises, temporary or permanent, would reviewed "very carefully" before any decision could be made on whether to fill it or not.
Overtime hours are also to be reduced as will the number of agency nurses used by the hospital with the result, Mr Duffy said, that both surgeons and consultants will end up underemployed, while nurses will be overstretched.
Fine Gael spokesperson on health, Ms Olivia Mitchell, called on the Minister for Health to intervene in the crisis to ensure patients' safety.
"Hospital budgets cannot be reduced by 10 per cent in real terms without having catastrophic affects," she said.
"Ward closures and other economies are one thing but it is simply unacceptable in a hospital setting, not to provide cover for maternity and sick leave.
The Labour Party said the Minister for Health, Mr Michael Martin, knew of the crisis facing the hospital, but did nothing to avert it.
The crisis in the Mater Hospital could have been averted." Ms Liz McManus said.
"We have one of Dublin's major hospitals closing wards, denying patients vital treatment and services, and its nurses facing redundancy, even though the Minister for Health is well aware of the perilous budgetary situation the hospital has been facing since the beginning of the year.
" . . . There is a clear cash crisis in Irish hospitals. That the government can justify expenditure on two new government jets, yet see hospital wards close for lack of money, is an absolute outrage."