Cork University Hospital has set a record for the number of admitted patients on trolleys with 74 waiting, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation.

A 90-year-old man had to beg staff at Cork University Hospital to give his wife a bed after she had been left on a trolley for days.

A Cork hospital is buying beds in private hospitals in a bid to reduce severe overcrowding in its emergency department.

Labour has pledged to spend €40 million over three years to tackle overcrowding at the beleaguered University Hospital Limerick.

The trolley crisis is unlikely to be alleviated any time soon, the representative body for nurses claims.

Health Minister Simon Harris has been summoned to an emergency meeting of the Oireachtas health committee next week to discuss the ongoing trolley crisis in hospitals.

If Ireland’s ailing health service were a patient, it would be on life support. In a way, it already is, as we face an existential threat to a service that is lurching from crisis to crisis. Signs are that trolley numbers in hospitals have hit record highs this week.

Health Minister, Simon Harris, has apologised to patients and their families affected by this week's extreme overcrowding crisis in Ireland's hospitals.

New research has made the "surprising" finding that patients treated at low volume hospitals have shorter length of stay after emergency surgery and may be discharged earlier than from high volume hospitals.

A mother with Crohn’s Disease, and suffering from abscesses on her rectum, was being treated on a chair in the Emergency Department of University Hospital Limerick today where a record 92 patients languished on trolleys in the ED and on wards.

Hospital consultants say a small fall in the numbers of people on hospital waiting lists around the country is still just a drop in the ocean.

The head of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), Phil ní Sheaghdha, has described a competition to encourage use of the discharge lounge at St James hospital as “clumsy”.

In her more than 40 years nursing, Margaret Frahill has just put down one of the toughest weeks of her career.

A mother has told of the poor living conditions in which her family and her 19-month-old toddler who was born with half a heart are "stuck" in.

No extra acute hospital beds are being opened as part of the HSE's €26m winter plan to deal with hospital overcrowding.

The HSE will set out its plan today for tackling hospital overcrowding this winter.

A protest has taken place at University Hospital Waterford highlighting overcrowding at the Acute Psychiatry Unit.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has described hospital overcrowding as "obscene", as trolley figures emerged showing 679 patients waiting for a bed, the worst so far this year and the second-highest ever recorded.

A leading campaigner has warned politicians that patients were dying needlessly at University Hospital Waterford because of the failure to fund vital services.

The Government has ordered an extra 41 rail carriages at a cost of €150m which it is claimed will help reduce overcrowding on commuter routes.

University Hospital Limerick is the worst affected.

There are more than 550 patients waiting for beds in hospitals around the country today.

There are more than 550 people waiting for hospital beds around the country this morning.

The number of patients waiting on trolleys at hospitals nationwide today has slipped above 500.

The country's hospitals have 554 patients are waiting for beds this morning, according to today’s INMO Trolley Watch.

More than 700 medically fit patients are stuck in hospital beds across the country because they cannot be safely discharged.

The Minister for Health, Simon Harris, has hit back at claims he has no plan to deal with “outrageous” levels of patient overcrowding at University Hospital Limerick (UHL).

More than 500 people are waiting for hospital beds around the country this morning.