THE HSE has confirmed there have been no savings to date with the reconfiguration of medical services in the mid-west.

Up to 700 people have turned out in Co Meath to protest over cutbacks at Our Lady's Hospital in Navan.

The country’s top medics tonight launched a withering attack on the Government’s health strategy branding the Health Service Executive cowardly, incompetent and arrogant.

A GP group in the mid-west has expressed outrage over a HSE advert announcing its plans to end 24-hour A&E services at Nenagh General Hospital.

TWENTY-FOUR coffins are to be paraded outside the Dáil to highlight the number of people who will needlessly lose their lives each year if a west Cork hospital has its A&E services downgraded.

Bosses at the Mercy Hospital in Cork city have hit back at claims that it's new A&E unit is descending into chaos.

A LOCUM consultant will be employed at the A&E department in Kerry General Hospital (KGH), Tralee, for some time to come, it emerged yesterday.

TWO radiographers cannot be appointed to operate a €1.5 million CT scanner lying idle at Mallow Hospital in Co Cork for more than a year because of a recruitment ceiling, the state’s public spending watchdog was told yesterday.

A 17-YEAR-OLD died of multi-organ failure when his serotonin levels became dramatically raised after taking a lethal amount of cocaine and esctasy, an inquest heard yesterday.

An A&E department — capable of catering for 30,000 patients every year — which was due to open this month in Cork is facing further delays due to ongoing talks about staffing.

Management at Kerry General Hospital is being asked to deal with a crisis in the A&E department.

The Health Service Executive is appealing to people only to attend the A&E departments in Dublin's Mater and Beaumont hospitals in the event of a genuine emergency.

The HSE tonight hit back at criticisms of plans to have patients admitted or discharged within six hours of arriving in an emergency department by the end of the year.

THE chief of staff to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Joseph Kabila has been assaulted and robbed in northwest London, outside a TV studio.

AGGRESSIVE drunks will be forced out of Accident and Emergency (A&E) and into special “wet rooms” under a €500 million rescue plan for casualty care units to be unveiled by Fine Gael and Labour today.

DOCTOR James Binchy of the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine claims says that “treatment for serious conditions was being delayed as a result of patients having to be transferred from the (new VHI) clinics to hospital A&E departments” (Irish Examiner, June 23).

A Labour TD who has protested outside the Mater Hospital more than 150 times vowed today to continue until conditions in its accident and emergency department improve.

The Government must make real progress on tackling the crisis in the A&E hospital service as it has slumped to a 15-year low, doctors warned today.

I AM relieved to note that the 10-year-old A&E crisis has at last been recognised as an emergency by the Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney and the Health Service Executive.

The deliberate manipulation of statistics can lead to enormous confusion.

MEDICAL and nursing staff at a Tipperary hospital are to join with a local hospital action group to develop and fund a €50,000 blueprint on how their hospital should be developed.

A FAMILY is seeking a garda investigation into 15 hours of missing nursing records in the case of a mother who died from a perforated ulcer that had been diagnosed as constipation.

Nurses vowed to step up their campaign against overcrowding on hospital A&E wards today to demand immediate Government action to solve the problem.

THE cost of running the new A&E unit at Cork University Hospital increased by €1m in the three months after it opened and a further e1m increase is expected by mid-October.

THE growing number of female doctors is causing a staffing crisis as they are avoiding jobs that involve weekend work and long hours, claim consultants.

MINUTES after the first blast ripped through Liverpool Street station, the emergency plan swung into operation. Hospitals were soon inundated with the hundreds of injured.

A new body of experts must be formed to tackle the overcrowding crisis at hospital accident and emergency wards, it was urged today.

The Health and Safety Authority has criticised overcrowding in hospital A&E departments and the risk it poses to staff and patients.

A new €12.8m emergency department at Cork University Hospital which has lain idle for months is to open in a bid to relieve overcrowding, it was confirmed today.

The Health and Safety Authority is poised to inspect Accident and Emergency departments around the country this weekend.

The situation in A&E departments in hospitals around the country is getting worse.

New hospital wards are being built across the country, only to stay idle because of a lack of funding to staff them, writes Paul O'Brien.

Fianna Fail may have the beginning of another grassroots rebellion on its hands, following an extraordinary outburst against the Hanly Report, from a former junior minister.

One of Dublin’s largest hospitals has denied claims that patients were treated in a mortuary.

Extra strain is going on A&E services because of the type of people using the services most, a new study claims.

NURSES representatives have pointed the finger of blame at consultants for the latest A&E crisis to grip the country's major hospitals.

The Irish Federation of Nursing Homes has said that the current crisis in A&E departments in the eastern region could be eased if recovering patients were moved to empty nursing home beds.

The Eastern Regional Health Authority has reported a fall in the number of people attending Accident & Emergency departments following an appeal to the public yesterday.