A&E crisis a 'national emergency' - Harney

Minister for Health Mary Harney says the situation in accident & emergency units across the State needs to be treated as a "national emergency".

Following a meeting with the new Health Service Executive (HSE) A&E Task Force, Ms Harney said: "The bottom line is that no-one, particularly no older person, should sleep overnight on a trolley in a corridor."

She claimed every resource would be prioritised and every action needed will would be taken to improve care for patients at A&E.

"People who need to be admitted will have beds, not trolleys, and the basics for human dignity. This will be put in place in the coming months," Ms Harney said.

"Anything less than this is not acceptable to the public, not acceptable to me, and not acceptable to the HSE," she said.

The task force, chaired by the HSE's acute hospitals network manager Angela Fitzgerald, held its inaugural meeting in Dublin today.

Ms Fitzgerald said the task force's overall objective is for no patient to be waiting to be admitted to a ward for more than 6 hours after assessment.

But she said in the short term the target will be to have no patients waiting for more than 24 hours in any A&E and for no unit to have more than 10 patients waiting for admission.

Ms Fitzgerald said: "All initiatives will be implemented with the cooperation of hospital staff and focus on the particular issues causing the difficulties in the identified hospitals."

"These will be supported by targets tailor-made for individual hospitals," she added.

Earlier HSE chief Professor Brendan Drum it was "totally unacceptable" that in particular hospitals some patients have to wait for more than 24 hours after a decision to admit them to a ward has been made.