The Irish Kidney Association has told Health Minister James Reilly that the loss of the discretionary medical card is having a “devastating personal economic effect” on the country’s 3,000 transplanted people.

Broadcaster Mary Kennedy has pleaded with the public to sign up as organ donors after witnessing at first hand the heartbreak and miraculous recoveries involved.

Modern medicine has found many ways to turn what might once have been a tragedy into something if not quite a victory then something uplifting, something defying and utterly of the human spirit.

ELIZABETH MURPHY who received a liver transplant when she was just four and a half months old will celebrate her third birthday this Easter.

ONE of the world’s greatest rugby players is putting his mighty weight behind the Irish Kidney Association’s campaign to get Ireland’s living kidney donor programme up and running.