A 73-year-old woman with heart and lung problems has been lying on a trolley in the accident and emergency unit of a Dublin hospital for the past five days.
The woman's plight was highlighted last evening by Labour's Dublin Central TD Joe Costello who said it proved that the 10-point plan announced last November by Minister for Health Mary Harney to solve the A&E crisis has had no effect.
He claimed that in addition to the elderly woman having to spend days on a trolley at the Mater hospital, patients were also having to be treated in ambulances in the hospital car park.
A spokesman for the hospital said 23 patients were on trolleys in the hospital's A&E unit yesterday morning but patients did not have to be treated in ambulances. Some patients in A&E were waiting up to four days to be admitted, he confirmed.
The Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) said 246 patients were on trolleys across the State yesterday as the Health and Safety Authority began its round of inspection of 11 A&Es to see if patients were being put at risk, as has been claimed by the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association.
The INO has threatened to protest outside A&E units unless significant progress is made on alleviating problems this month.
"The entire situation is a mess. For months, I have been campaigning to have the overcrowding at the Mater addressed but the Tánaiste, and the Taoiseach in whose constituency the Mater is, haven't provided a single solution," Mr Costello said.
