The Irish Medical Organisation has criticised the Minister for Health for what it has called his "inflammatory" remarks on consultants on the crisis in emergency departments.

Speaking after a meeting of the Emergency Department Task Force Implementation Group, Leo Varadkar said the €74m in extra funding this year had not had the impact hoped for or expected and he was not satisfied with the results to date.

He also said work practices of some consultants needed to be dealt with to ensure more weekend discharge.

Chairperson of the IMO's consultant committee Dr Peadar Gilligan said consultants were working under enormous pressure and were amongst the frontline workers who were bearing the brunt of the crisis the health services.

He said that under the 2012 work practice agreements, all consultants can be rostered for a five/seven service to include weekends and there can be delegated discharge at the weekends to allow patients to be discharged at that time.

He said it was not the case that consultants need to change their work practices, but that the problem is an insufficient number of consultants in the public health system.

Meanwhile, the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association said there were 230 permanent hospital consultant posts not being filled.

The association has sought a meeting with the minister to discuss potential solutions.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives' Organisation has called an emergency meeting of its emergency department nurse representatives for Monday 5 October to discuss the problems.

INMO general secretary Liam Doran said that despite all of the commitments, over the past number of months and years, the recent summer has been the worst on record for overcrowding.

Minister Varadkar said around 300 extra hospital beds will be opened by the end of the year to ease emergency department overcrowding, but warned that this will take time as capital developments are needed.

He said that extra money and staff alone would not solve the problem of overcrowding.

Fianna Fáil Health Spokesperson Billy Kelleher said it was obvious from the outset that extra funding aimed at easing emergency department overcrowding would not have the desired impact.

He said the fundamental problem was a lack of capacity in the health services.

Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, he said: "We now find in September the minister promising to open 300 extra beds by the end of the year, bearing in mind we had 321 people lying in trolleys today.

"We have thousands of people waiting for outpatients appointments and thousands more waiting for day case and inpatient appointments, so the capacity issue is the critical issue."

Mr Kelleher said policies pursued in recent times have really undermined that capacity.

He said last year's budget was wholly inadequate and said there was going to be difficulties in capacity "from the word go".