Patients dressed in pyjamas at a smoke-free hospital campus are hiding behind trees and bushes to smoke, chairman of the HSE West Forum has said.

Dozens of schoolchildren, their teachers and families at two primary and secondary schools are being tested for TB after separate outbreaks of the life-threatening condition.

Two hospitals in Galway have been fined a total of €1.2m due to their patient waiting times.

The HSE has been ordered to merge hospitals into new administrative groups with a single budget and a staff ceiling as part of plans to cut costs, high-level administration, and patient waiting times.

Up to 20 psychiatric nurses are protesting at the entrance to Merlin Park Hospital in Co Galway this afternoon.

A 70-year-old Connemara man who exposed himself to children attending an Irish college last summer and offered them money for sex has been given a suspended 11-month sentence with strict conditions attached.

Private security in six HSE hospitals cost over €2m in 2010 and almost €900,000 for the first six months of 2011.

The HSE could make huge savings if it streamlined payments made to priests providing chaplaincy services across its acute hospital network in the West.

FOUR of the country’s biggest hospitals between them amassed patient income debt totalling more than €60 million last year.

The number of patients on trolleys at Galway hospitals has reached a record high of 60 today.

A 78-YEAR-OLD patient has been forced to spend the last four nights on a trolley in University Hospital Galway (UHG) due to overcrowding.

TEN major hospitals have been forced to offer services despite failing to reach the necessary staffing levels due to ongoing public service employment restrictions.

Talks aimed at resolving the conflict between HSE management and trade unions are entering into their sixth hour at Merlin Park Hospital in Galway.

HEALTH Service Executive staff in Galway have been given leave to attend the Galway Races despite reductions in staffing levels and cutbacks in frontline services across the organisation.

AN orthopaedic surgeon has claimed he will only be able to operate “once or twice more” this year at Merlin Park Hospital in Galway because of plans to suspend all orthopaedic surgery for four months.

ATTENDING his last Oireachtas committee meeting on health and children as HSE chief executive, Brendan Drumm claimed that during his five years at the helm of the controversial health agency “solid progress has been made” but added “it would be naive to think that we still don’t have some way to go”.

ORTHOPAEDIC consultants in Galway last night expressed fear of proposals by the HSE West to suspend all elective surgery at Merlin Park Hospital from September until the end of the year. They say as many as 1,000 patients could be affected.

THE family of a woman who died while her test results lay unopened in a consultant’s pigeon hole battled for a year to get the hospital to explain the oversight, it has emerged.

An investigation into Mayo General Hospital following the death of a 53-year-old woman has found a "serious deficiency" in administrative procedures.

MANAGEMENT and staff at the biggest hospital in the west of Ireland have been told by Health Minister Mary Harney to become more efficient and make better use of resources.

VICTIMS of rape in Galway and Mullingar have to travel to Dublin to be examined following an attack, as promised sexual assault units have not yet been opened.

HEALTH trade union IMPACT has claimed a series of ward closures in Galway over the summer will have a devastating effect on patients and communities in the region.

THE crisis in the health service deepened last night with revelations that more than 41,000 patients are on waiting lists at a time when health service employers have banned staff recruitment.

FINE Gael yesterday accused the Government of “pre-election lies” following the introduction of a recruitment freeze on frontline health services.

PATIENTS in the West and North West face major cutbacks in care as seven hospitals have plunged €27 million into the red, Fine Gael warned last night.

Seven hospitals in the west and north-west have exceeded their budgets by more than €27m, it was claimed today.

Top-scoring forward and captain John Doyle is back in training with Kildare ahead of Sunday week's Leinster SFC quarter-final with Offaly.

ARTHRITIS suffers forced to wait years for treatment are becoming suicidal, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.

The Western Health Board has appealed to the public to stay away from a hospital in Galway city.

OFFICIALS from the Department of Health are to meet medical representatives today in the ongoing row over funding for two orthopaedic units in the west.