The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation is calling for the HSE's Emergency Taskforce to meet urgently to discuss overcrowding in Irish hospitals.
Cork University Hospital was the second most overcrowded hospital in the country in May, with 898 patients forced to wait on a trolley in the Emergency Department and wards elsewhere in the hospital.
Over 8,680 patients were without a bed in hospitals across the country during May.
The IMNO says May is traditionally time where the pressure begins the ease, however they say nurses and midwives have had no reprieve this year.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said on a recent visit to Cork that he has tasked the HSE with coming up with a plan to ease the overcrowding crisis.
He told RedFM News that the current level of overcrowding is not acceptable.
"We need to go hospital by hospital, emergency department by emergency department, identify what the gaps are because they're different. The problems in the Mercy are different to the problems in CUH, are different to the problems in Limerick.
"We need to understand exactly what it is in one place its workforce in another place its beds in another place its late discharge of care.
"What we've seen in terms of people waiting, particularly the kinds of cases you're talking about right now, are completely completely unacceptable, and we have to act and we have to do tangible real things."
