Nurses are accusing the HSE of being reckless in their efforts to deal with hospital overcrowding.

The INMO says from Wednesday on patients will be admitted to 30 beds in Virginia Community Nursing Unit in Cavan, despite a lack of staff to care for them.

It comes following days of controversy over the numbers of patients on trolleys across the country – yesterday nurses recorded more than 500 waiting on a bed.

Industrial relations officer Tony Fitzpatrick says no staff have been hired to cover the additional beds in the Virginia facility:

“The HSE have indicated that they will commence admitting patients to the Virginia Community Nursing Unit, the difficulty that we have with that is that they will be admitting patients to a ward that has no staff in place to care for those patients and we believe that that is highly reckless.”