The Irish Association for Emergency Medicine has warned that patients are dying needlessly - because of the state of the health sector.
It follows revelations this week that a record number of almost 58,000 were on trolleys in the first seven months of the year.
Thousands over the age of 75 were left on trollies for longer than 24 hours.
IAEM Communications Officer, Dr Fergal Hickey, said: “The reality is that we simply do not have the capacity to deal with the workloads that are coming our way.”
“Demand for emergency services, demand for acute hospital admission is going up all the time and the number of beds in which to admit these people has not kept pace with that.
“There were always too few beds, but the situation has got worse and is getting worse. This is not a surprise,” he added.