Cork driver and four-time British Rally Champion Keith Cronin will campaign the new generation Hyundai i20 R5-N in this year’s British Rally Championship that includes rounds of the World Rally Championship (Wales Rally GB) and the European Rally Championship (Rally Ypres).

The HSE received more than 23,000 formal complaints about the health service in 2016. The main issues raised included access, dignity and respect, safe and effective care, communication, and clinical judgement.

Internal audits have found IT issues in various sections of the HSE, as well as concerns over mobile phones and some examples of overpayments.

Prescriptions for anxiety and depression drugs cost the State almost €40m in 2012, an Irish Examiner investigation has found.

The HSE has been forced to remove from its website details of state payments to thousands of primary care health professionals.

Five family doctor practices each received HSE payments totalling over €600,000 in 2012, including two practices that received payments in excess of €700,000.

There has been a "narrowing" of discretion in the issuing of medical cards but no evidence of maladministration, the Ombudsman said yesterday.

Health Minister James Reilly is to review restrictions on the issuing of discretionary medical cards following warnings from Fine Gael backbenchers that the controversy was becoming unmanageable on the doorsteps.

More than 70 of the country’s top-earning doctors shared €34.37 million from payments received through the medical card system in 2012, new figures show.

Doctors have accused the HSE of “lying” over the medical card crisis, insisting service cuts of €113m will unleash a “purge” on vulnerable patients.

More than 40,000 people will lose their medical cards, due to new income eligibility changes ann-ounced in the budget and further cuts by the HSE.

The entitlements of existing medical card holders will be scrutinised in Health Minister James Reilly’s upcoming review.

Fine Gael has accused the previous government of allowing pharmaceutical companies to engage in “out-of-control” pricing policies in the decade to 2010.

The Minister for Health says he has told the HSE in no uncertain terms that delays in issuing medical cards are not acceptable and must be tackled.

HAVING given the issue of a new name for the soon-to-be-defunct HSE some thought, I have arrived at the conclusion that an appropriate moniker might be HYDRA, in honour of the mythological nine-headed monster.

MORE than 300,000 medical card applications and reviews have been processed since July, with a new centralised office receiving more than 4,000 enquires a day.

THE Department of Health and the HSE are developing new policy to improve practices around the overuse of benzodiazepines (BZDs) within the health system.

THE prescribing of sleeping tablets has reached record levels, falling just below common cholesterol and diabetes drugs, HSE figures have shown.

THE publication of a Health Research Board (HRB) report, warning of the continued misuse and possible fatal effects of prescription drugs for anxiety and depression, comes eight years after a governmental report recommended action on the issue.

PATIENTS taking potent anti-anxiety medication and sleeping pills could have their details subtly shared among health professionals in a bid to tackle the abuse of addictive prescription drugs.

HEALTH union IMPACT has voted to embark on industrial action if necessary to oppose the HSE’s attempts to centralise medical card processing.