An emergency medicine consultant says that transferring stabilised patients to hospitals like Roscommon will simply not work.
His comments come as a new HSE plan is put into effect today where certain patients who meet a criteria will be transferred from University Hospital Limerick to Ennis General Hospital.
Local TD Denis Naughten has also called on the HSE to allow ambulances to transport stable patients to Roscommon's urgent care centre to help ease overcrowding.
However Dr Fergal Hickey, says that transferring patients to facilities like Roscommon and Ennis where the the necessary services aren't available, could put them at risk.
"You need to be attached to a hospital that has the capacity to support you, be it intensive care, acute medicine and surgery, anesthesia, radiology, and so on. The position that applied when Roscommon lost it's services equally applies now, so there's no possibility of returning to a situation where the hospitals we're talking about end up having an emergency department or end up receiving sick patients because that would be inappropriate clinically, and would put those patients at risk."
