The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has said a report is "a damning indictment" of the Government's policy in the area.

The group was responding to an unpublished report of the HSE's National Doctors Training and Planning (NDTP) unit.

It has claimed that one in 20 doctors employed by the HSE is not on the Medical Council specialist register.

It also said that the number of applicants for consultant posts has fallen dramatically.

The IHCA has said Ireland has one of the lowest number of approved medical specialists on a population basis in the EU - at 1.39 per 1,000 population.

It added that this is 43% below the EU average.

IHCA president is Dr Donal O'Hanlon: "The HSE report confirms that the consultant recruitment crisis is the root cause of the extensive patient safety and care concerns throughout our acute hospital services."

In relation to the Medical Council specialist register, the IHCA said Mr Justice Peter Kelly - president of the High Court - wrote to the Minister for Health and health service management in May 2018 to outline his concerns about this practice.

"This has jeopardised and continues to jeopardise patients' safety," Dr O'Hanlon said.

"In addition, one in five of the permanent consultant posts cannot be filled due to the Government's persistent policy that is driving our highly trained much needed specialists abroad," he added.

"The record numbers awaiting hospital outpatient appointments is due to the fact that around one in five permanent hospital consultant posts in our acute services are either unfilled or filled on a temporary basis".

The IHCA said this means that nearly 500 permanent consultant posts are unfilled.

The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has called for Health Minister Simon Harris to respond to revelations.

Dr Clive Kilgallen, chair of the IMO Consultant Committee, said: "The simple truth of the matter is that we have too few consultants, the number of vacant consultant posts is now in excess of 500 and we are unable to recruit anyone to these posts.

"The direct consequence of this crisis in consultant recruitment is the inability of our health services to provide timely care to patients, ever growing waiting lists which in many instances will lead to adverse outcomes for patients.

"The solution to this cannot and should not be that the HSE recruit doctors who are not on the specialist register to undertake these roles, this is a breach of trust and a serious governance issue."