As overcrowding in accident and emergency units across the State worsens, it has emerged that a number of hospitals are having to deal with a further problem in the form of the highly infectious winter vomiting bug.
Dublin's Beaumont Hospital has confirmed it has more than 20 suspected cases of the bug among patients and staff and it has imposed visitor restrictions.
Cavan General Hospital is also dealing with an outbreak of the bug. It has six suspected cases and has also asked people to restrict their visits to the hospital.
People protesting outside the Dáil yesterday about A&E overcrowding claimed that there were also cases of the bug in the A&E unit of Dublin's Mater hospital, but a hospital spokesman said there were no suspected cases of the bug.
About 40 people took part in the protest, many of them part of the extended family of Mrs Kathleen Byrne (72), a Dublin woman who was on a trolley at the Mater Hospital from Saturday morning until yesterday afternoon - more than 72 hours.
Ms Janette Byrne said that her mother, who is believed to have had a stroke, had to be wheeled in the "lashing rain and freezing cold" from A&E to another part of the hospital for a scan early yesterday because a lift was broken. "Things are getting worse," she said.
She said her mother had neither eaten nor slept properly in days. She could not sleep on her trolley in A&E because of the amount of noise and shouting. "People are vomiting beside my mother's trolley. Visitors seem to have symptoms of winter vomiting," she said.
Fine Gael's health spokesman, Dr Liam Twomey, said if winter vomiting had broken out, it would compound an already desperate situation. "It's just impossible to keep a department like that clean when it's so overcrowded," he said. "I've had a case explained to me today of a woman getting her blood test done in the toilet of the Mater because the place is so overcrowded."
The Irish Nurses Organisation, which supported yesterday's protest, said more than 230 patients were on trolleys at hospitals across the State yesterday, up from about 180 the day before. Its figures indicated the following hospitals had patients on trolleys: Naas 18; Mater 32; Beaumont 20; Blanchardstown 10; Loughlinstown five; St Vincent's 16; Tallaght 33 in A&E and 16 on trolleys elsewhere; St James's 14; Limerick 14; Ennis three; Galway five; Portiuncula one; Cavan 11; Cork 24 and Drogheda 11.
The INO has sought an urgent meeting with the Minister for Health, Ms Harney, to discuss a plan it is putting forward to help alleviate the A&E crisis.
SIPTU yesterday called on the Government to fund home-help services adequately, saying if they were more widely available, more elderly people could be discharged from hospital to their own homes, thus freeing up acute beds.