The president of the Intensive Care Society of Ireland (ISCI) has warned some critical care units are under pressure.

It comes as the number of clusters of the coronavirus has risen to 260.

There are 99 COVID-19 clusters in nursing homes and residential care centres around the country. 

Meanwhile, there are 45 recorded in hospitals and 32 in residential institutions.

There have been 174 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland, with a total of 5,364 confirmed cases.

Dublin has the highest number of cases at 2,692 (55% of all cases) - followed by Cork with 362 cases (7%).

Dr Catherine Motherway told Pat Kenny surge plans are being used.

"We all have what we call 'surge plans' and we all are operationalising those surge plans - which is a fancy word for saying it's finding out how we can run it.

"On a given day, depending on your staff and who is absent and who might be sick and who are absent because of contact tracing you might have a variable need.

"But I would think at the moment we certainly have capacity in the system.

"Dublin is under pressure, but they still have surge capacity.

"Some of the Dublin hospitals have had to transfer patients to other hospitals  - so Dublin is obviously under pressure and the north-west has had to transfer some patients.

"Those of us in the east, south and the mid-west still have normal capacity in our normal ICU numbers.

"In my hospital at the moment we have normal capacity in our ICU numbers.

"And we have the ability to immediately expand by at least eight to 10 beds if we need to , if we have a sudden influx of patients such as we have seen other jurisdictions like in Italy.

"So we all have plans to surge and it's all variable".