‘Little done to address hospital overcrowding crisis’

Neither the HSE nor the Department of Health have done anything of “substance” to deal with hospital overcrowding, which has reached a record high, with 677 people on trolleys, according to the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine.

Levelling the criticism, it said it was “gravely concerned, but not surprised at what has transpired”.

“This was always going to be how 2018 started in our EDs (emergency departments),” a spokeswoman for the association said yesterday.