Over 114,000 people treated on hospital trolleys in 2025
Ottoline Spearman
Over 114,000 people were admitted to hospital without a bed - treated instead on a hospital trolley - in 2025, including over 1,248 children.
This is according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) Trolley Watch, which provides a daily running total of the number of patients on trolleys across Ireland's hospitals.
INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said: “Yet another year has passed with an unacceptably high number of patients being treated on trolleys, chairs and in other inappropriate bed spaces. Nurses, midwives and other healthcare professionals must not continue to shoulder public anger arising from repeated failures in planning across the health service.
“While there has been a slight reduction in the number of patients being treated in an inappropriate space in our hospitals, the reliance on surge beds, which are not properly staffed, is a cause of concern.
“There needs to be a turning point in how healthcare staffing is planned and managed, and it needs to start with an immediate filling of all funded posts while also focusing on capacity, staffing and conditions across acute and community services.
“The continued use of trolleys and reliance on surge capacity mean that too many nurses are routinely working short-staffed. In many hospitals, unfilled rosters are becoming the norm rather than the exception, creating increasingly unsafe conditions for both nurses and patients in our hospitals.
The INMO said that in March, healthcare unions were "assured" that the recruitment of posts would be a priority for the HSE, but "it is clear this couldn't be further from the case".
"Over 6,500 funded posts are still vacant. We were told barriers to recruitment would be removed, yet authority is not being delegated to allow clinical decision-makers to fill posts."
On Wednesday, the top overcrowded hospitals were University Hospital Limerick, with 22,473 patients; University Hospital Galway, with 11,630 patients; Cork University Hospital, with 10,113 patients, and Sligo University Hospital and St Vincent's University Hospital.
