Managers at three Dublin hospitals were today summoned to a meeting of council public health officials to be questioned about how medical waste ended up in an illegal dumping site.

The Minister for Health has insisted his department was not aware of claims that children may have been injected with an animal vaccine in 1973.

The director of the Prison Service, Sean Aylward, has outlined measures to the country's prison officers aimed at tackling the growing drugs problem in Irish jails.