Fianna Fail has expressed concern about the new warning from emergency medicine doctors that patient safety is in danger as a result of overcrowding in hospital emergency departments around the country.

Fianna Fáil Spokesperson on Health Billy Kelleher said the doctors had sounded very clear warnings about patient safety but he claimed there was a a sense of denial on the part of Health Minister James Reilly about the extent of the crisis.

The Irish Emergency Medicine Trainees' Association has said overcrowding in hospital emergency departments is 'unequivocally dangerous for patients'.

Their concerns were contained in a letter signed by 24 of its members to the safety body HIQA, which was copied to the HSE, RTE News reported.

Association President Dr Aileen McCabe said as senior frontline doctors operating in emergency departments, they were concerned that trolley numbers remained very high.

She said in the letter that that over the past two weeks, trolley numbers had exceeded 300 a day.

The emergency doctors say patients with infections are presenting at hospitals 'and are posing a serious risk to patients whose immune systems are compromised because there is nowhere to separate them'.

The emergency medics body also claims the May 2012 HIQA Tallaght Hospital report recommendations on ED overcrowding are being ignored by some hospital managers.

Fianna Fail called for more beds to be opened to deal with the pressure on EDs at the moment.

The HSE has claimed there had been a significant  improvement in ED trolley figures between 2011 and 2013.

The health executive said hospitals had been experiencing pressures in recent weeks as a result of the seasonal winter influx of patients.

According to figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisaiton (INMO), there were 308 patients awaiting admission on trolleys in EDs and a further 86 patients on trolleys in wards earlier today. There were 30 patients on trolleys today at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.