Nurses working in Emergency Departments (EDs) throughout the country have voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action, including strike action, it has been confirmed.

The nurses, all members of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), voted 92% in favour of the action in a recent ballot.

According to the INMO, the decision was taken to ballot members on industrial action due to the continuing overcrowding and inadequate staffing levels in EDs nationwide. This has led to patient care being compromised on an ongoing basis, it insisted.

The INMO is serving formal notice on the HSE and all relevant employers that this campaign of action will begin on Tuesday, December 15. It will be a national campaign involving all of the country's EDs.

"This campaign of industrial action is being taken as a last resort and after 10 years of discussions and broken promises. Our members are particularly frustrated at the daily acceptance by those in authority of ED overcrowding, and in many hospitals, ward overcrowding due to extra trolleys," the organisation said.

Between January and the end of October of this year, almost 79,500 patients were left waiting on trolleys in hospitals nationwide. This is a jump of 26% when compared to the same period last year and 36% when compared to the same period in 2013.

Last month alone, almost 8,000 patients were left waiting on trolleys, with the worst affected hospitals being Dublin's Beaumont Hospital (803), University Hospital Limerick (763) and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda (616).

"This campaign is necessary as a direct result of the failure of Government and health service management over many years to recognise this overcrowding crisis and to allocate the necessary resources to properly address it.
 
"Our members will no longer tolerate having to go to work every day and face constant overcrowding where both the care of patients, and the health and wellbeing of staff, is compromised without anyone in authority seeming to recognise the consequences," commented INMO general secretary, Liam Doran.