Opposition parties claimed yesterday that it has taken the approach of a general election to force Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney to acknowledge that overcrowding in hospital A&E units should be treated as a national emergency.
Labour's health spokeswoman Liz McManus said the 2007 election seemed to have forced Ms Harney to acknowledge "what everyone has recognised for more than two years", that A&E units are in crisis.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny claimed the reality of the crisis had only dawned on Fianna Fáil and the PDs when the prospect of defeat at the ballot box loomed into view.
Green Party health spokesman John Gormley asked where had Ms Harney been hiding during the crisis.
"I want to know why it has taken so long for Minister Harney to discover that there is an emergency in our national A&E units? Where has she been for the past 19 months?"
They were reacting to comments by Ms Harney on Monday when she told reporters in Dublin prior to attending the first meeting of a new taskforce set up to tackle the crisis, that the A&E problem now had to be treated as an emergency.
Up to that she had constantly claimed progress was being made on the A&E issue through the implementation of a 10-point plan she announced in November 2004. Some of it was never implemented, however, and there are still hundreds of patients on trolleys in A&E units waiting for beds every day.
The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) said there were 395 patients on trolleys in A&E units across the State yesterday. The HSE said the figure was 274.
INO general secretary Liam Doran said the public admission by Ms Harney that an emergency situation existed must now be matched with concrete sustained action.
"In this context the INO will be seeking clarification as to what real differences this declaration will make to A&E and all related services. This is necessary in view of all the previous statements from Government and health service management that all that could be done was being done," he said.
Finbarr Fitzpatrick, secretary general of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, said he welcomed the Minister's realisation that an emergency exists and that her 10 point plan was not solving the problem.
He added that plans by Ms Harney to assign new new beds immediately to A&E departments so elderly people did not have to sleep overnight on trolley was "tinkering at the edges".
He pointed out that A&Es were already overcrowded and there would be no space for beds.
Ms Harney also said there were plans to have hospital diagnostic departments open in the evenings and at weekends.
Mr Fitzpatrick said the IHCA had proposed as far back as 1999 that hospitals have a longer working day.
He added that negotiations would have to take place with a number of unions on the plan but none had even begun at this stage. "They should have begun years ago," he said.
Sinn Féin's health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said extra beds were needed to solve the crisis and that the money spent on tax breaks for developers of private hospitals, together with the money wasted on the HSE's failed computer systems, would already have provided an additional 1,000 acute hospital beds.
Ms Harney and the head of the HSE Prof Brendan Drumm are due to appear before the Dáil Health Committee this morning where they will be questioned on what progress they are making.