The Government was accused by Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin of having no sense of urgency about the increased risk of people dying in hospitals due to a lack of funding. He said the Government had spent some €1 billion in tax reductions and other items in the October budget. "The Government had warnings right across the system,'' he added.

Mr Martin said RTÉ television programme Prime Time had revealed a very serious analysis by Dr Tony O'Connell, former national director of acute hospitals, about the appalling situation in emergency departments and delayed discharges. It had been written in September of last year, a month before the budget.

Dr O’Connell, he said, had referred to the risk to patient safety, delayed treatment for patients needing surgery and increased mortality for patients blocked in their transit through emergency departments.

Mr Martin said Minister for Health Leo Varadkar had said, "in his usual, detached, commentator approach'', it was nothing new to him and it was going to get worse. "Therefore, there will be more people at risk of dying in our hospitals before the Government decides to get to grips with it,'' Mr Martin added.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said Mr Martin came into the Dáil, week after week, purporting to have all the answers. Yet, his own party had no health policy at all.

“The mythical Fianna Fáil policy will deal with all of these answers sometime in the future,’’ he added.

He said an extra €500 million was provided to meet the overrun in the health services last year, with about €150 million for this year's budget. Last December, the Minister for Health had convened an emergency taskforce to deal with unacceptable delays in people getting into the system and being discharged. An extra €25 million was made available for that, Mr Kenny added.

He said other measures included the provision of some 900 additional transitional beds for this year on a temporary basis; in January, 500 transitional care beds were funded in private nursing homes and a further 400 in February to assist in the discharge of patients from acute hospitals.

Throughout the country, 173 short-term public beds were being opened for a three-month period and arrangements were put in place with the HSE to recruit frontline staff where there was an urgent need for them.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said 479 patients were "languishing'' on trolleys in hospital corridors. The second highest number, 40, were in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda in his Louth constituency, he added.

He said a letter from the Health Information and Quality Authority had pointed out that if recommendations it made in 2012 were implemented, the current risk to patients would have been significantly reduced.