The Health Minister Leo Varadkar has been meeting the Emergency Taskforce Implementation Group, to discuss how to improve the overcrowding problem in Emergency Departments.

Mr Varadkar says he will impose heavy fines on hospitals that fail to meet targets for cutting waiting lists.

The minister has committed to opening 300 extra hospital beds by the end of the year to ease overcrowding.,

Fergal Hickey is communications officer with the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine.

He says although it is a help, it will not do much to reverse savage cuts of the past.

"Before austerity kicked in, it was generally accepted that we had too few acute hospital beds in this country - and during the period of austerity, we've lost somewhere between 1,500 and 2,00 hospital beds" he told Newstalk Lunchtime.

"Those figures - you an argue about them - but it's in that order; and therefore the return of 300 beds to service will be a help, but it certainly doesn't undo many of the savage cuts that took place in the last few years" he added.

Michael O'Keefe is consultant ophthalmologist at Temple Street Children's Hospital.

He says this is the wrong way to go about tackling the problem.