The Workplace Relations Commission is to convene talks on Saturday between the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and health service management in a bid to avert a planned strike in hospital emergency departments next Thursday.
The INMO is planning to stage rolling two-hour work stoppages in seven hospital emergency departments on Thursday of next week in protest at over-crowding and staffing levels.
The hospitals where nurses are scheduled to strike next week include Beaumont and Tallaght in Dublin; University College Hospital Galway; Midland Regional Hospital, Tullamore; Cork's Mercy University Hospital; Cavan General Hospital; and University Hospital Waterford.
A second day of rolling strike action is also planned for the end of January.
The number of patients on trolleys and on wards awaiting admission to a hospital bed stood at 423 on Friday morning - a slight reduction on the figure of 427 recorded on Thursday.
Hospitals have begun making contingency arrangements for the planned strikes next Thursday that will see hundreds of non-urgent appointments and procedures cancelled.
Minister for Health Leo Varadkar said he hoped the work stoppage would not go ahead. Everything that could reasonably be done would be done to convince nurses that management, the HSE and Government are committed to the agreement negotiated before Christmas, he promised.
The minister said what was needed to deal with the emergency department overcrowding problem and was a five-year programme of sustained investment in hospitals, primary care and social care.
Earlier this week members of the INMO working in 26 emergency departments voted to reject a deal brokered at the Workplace Relations Commission before Christmas aimed at resolving a row over over-crowding and staffing.
The deal involved a series of new incentives to recruit and retain nurses in emergency departments as well as revised internal arrangements for tackling overcrowding in hospitals.
