Members of staff at Letterkenny General Hospital in Co Donegal have called on the public to become more vocal and to back the protests being led by the Irish Nurses' Organisation.
Consultants, doctors, nurses and administrative staff were among those who attended a public meeting in Letterkenny on Monday night to vent their frustration at the delay in sanctioning the start of work on a new accident and emergency department with 70 additional beds.
The hospital, which officially has 356 beds, is operating at between 104 per cent and 130 per cent of capacity and, with the fastest-growing proportion of elderly people in the State, the demands on the hospital are becoming more acute.
Elective surgery is regularly cancelled and patients are frequently told that there are no beds available. Even the hospital's coffee dock has been used this year as bed space.
Although services at the hospital - which caters for the bulk of Donegal's 140,000 population - have been expanded in recent years, there has been no corresponding increase in bed capacity.
Staff spoke about an "air of frustration" and said they could not provide any better care than that already being offered. Consultant physician Dr Ken Mulpeter said: "In the absence of increased capacity, the situation is going to continue."
INO industrial relations officer Noel Treanor said the planned extension had been promised twice, but no funding had been forthcoming.
Several speakers bitterly criticised the Government for not sanctioning the funding. Fianna Fáil - which was the only major party not to have public representatives at the meeting - was warned that it should not regard its seats in Donegal as being safe.
Fine Gael TD Dinny McGinley said: "Letterkenny General Hospital is probably the most important public facility in Donegal."
Meanwhile, all in-patient and day case elective procedures were cancelled yesterday.
The Health Service Executive North Western Area confirmed that the day services unit at the hospital had been commissioned as an emergency department to cope with pressure.
The meeting also heard a call for "people power", while the campaign to highlight the problems is being stepped up.
The INO will hold its second protest outside the hospital at 1pm tomorrow. A petition has been signed by more than 10,000 people.