The head of the HSE is admitting its winter plan and multi year plans to deal with overcrowding 'clearly' aren't sufficient.
Public healthcare providers have been told to move to a 'seven over seven' operating model to deal with the issue.
That means they've been told to work at full capacity all week, but Doctors have responded angrily to that call - saying they're already completely stretched.
HSE Chief Executive Stephen Mulvany says respiratory illnesses are contributing to the crisis:
''Clearly the the winter plan and the multi annual plans that we've been putting in place at this stage is not sufficient to do what we see as a clear patient safety risk in front of us. So that's partly because the levels of flu in particular, are much higher than even our worst and most pessimistic modeling. So we have an exceptional season with both Covid, RSV and also flu and unfortunately haven't yet seen the peak of flu.''
