Health Minister Simon Harris has announced a range of new measures to alleviate pressures on emergency departments in the country's public acute hospitals.
The HSE has reached an agreement with the National Treatment Purchase Fund to open 190 beds over the coming weeks, the minister told a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health.
The NTPF has written to each hospital group today and the minister said that they could press "go" on 83 beds. This additional capacity would open in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Tullamore, Co Offaly, and the Children's Hospital.
He said the NTPF was continuing to engage with hospital groups to finalise the details of the additional capacity.
He also confirmed that he would be signing a new statutory instrument to reduce the cost of minor injury units to €75. There are 11 minor units across the country.
The reduced fee will be effective from next week.
The minister also referred to the examination of the CervicalCheck programme by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and stressed that it was vital that women continued to attend for screening if they were to achieve their goal of making cervical cancer a rare disease in Ireland.
He said the switch to HPV primary screening was a key element in helping to eradicate this devastating disease and that he had written to the HSE to ask them to ensure the successful introduction of HPV screening during the first quarter of next year.
The highest number were in University Hospital Limerick (76), followed by Cork University Hospital (57) and Our Lady’s Hospital Navan (35).