A plan to have 107 nurses look after admitted patients on trolleys in emergency departments has stalled because there is no money to employ them.

The Department of Health has blamed “seasonal pressures”, including staff leave, for a 38% spike in trolley figures which has infuriated nurses.

The failure to elect a Taoiseach in the Dáil yesterday has turned a bizarre situation into a farce.

A 25-hour wait by a 101-year-old Co Clare grandmother on a trolley at the emergency department at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) has been described as "inhumane, deplorable, and disgraceful".

Nurses at Galway University Hospital's Emergency Department have voted unanimously in favour of industrial action over overcrowding in the department.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives’ Organisation (INMO) has called on the Government to lift its ban on nurse recruitment after an international study found patient outcomes are worse the heavier a nurse’s workload.

The HSE is still paying recently retired workers on hefty pension packages as much as €92,442 a year to come back and fill vacant posts.

Health Minister James Reilly has been urged to make extra funds available to prevent another January catastrophe overwhelming emergency departments.

Doctors voted yesterday against Croke Park II proposals which, they claimed, aimed to impose large pay cuts and much longer working hours on them.

Hospital budget plans have been thrown into turmoil before they are even finalised after nurses won a major battle against a “low-paid sham” “yellow-pack” graduate scheme.

The education and health sectors of the public service must, between them, yield almost three quarters of the total €1bn in savings required under Croke Park II over the next three years.

Nursing unions say the HSE initiative to hire 1,000 graduate nurses at 80% of previous salaries is a cheap labour scam.

One of the country’s largest hospitals is having to “exchange” trolleys with other wards to keep up with emergency department demand and is moving some patients to areas where they will not be counted, it has been claimed.

HEALTH Minister Dr James Reilly is planning to end the practice of admitting older people into long-term care directly from hospital.

TAKING €750 million out of the health service without putting patients at risk will be impossible, nurses warned yesterday.

EMERGENCY department nurses at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital will today stage another walkout — the third in three weeks — to protest at what they claim are overcrowded and dangerous conditions at the unit.

A 78-YEAR-OLD patient has been forced to spend the last four nights on a trolley in University Hospital Galway (UHG) due to overcrowding.

CHILD, elderly and surgical patients are being forced out of hospitals earlier or told to have one-day treatments because almost 2,000 public health service beds have been closed nationwide.

A MORTGAGE strike which has been proposed by trade union officials would hurt members more than the banks.

DELEGATES at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions biennial conference have backed calls for a “mortgage strike” by at least 100,000 people unless mortgages on primary residences are reduced to reflect current value.

THE Croke Park Agreement on public sector pay and reform has been given yet another boost after the country’s largest solely public service union decided to seek further clarification rather than flatly reject it.