A 12-year-old boy who can’t walk, talk or sit up on his own, has brought a High Court action for damages over catastrophic injuries he suffered in the final stages of his mother’s pregnancy.

Authorities at Dublin's Beaumont hospital say visiting restrictions will remain in place throughout the Easter weekend.

A PSYCHIATRIC hospital serving a major city is unfit for purpose and should be closed down, experts have warned.

AFTER 26 years of basing their lives around Kickham Barracks in Clonmel, the Lyons family and many others face an uncertain few years following Tuesday’s government decision to close the long-standing institution.

AN investigation has been launched after patient documents from a hospital in Sligo were found dumped in a bog in Co Galway.

SEVERAL “unacceptable practices” have been uncovered by inspectors at a HSE-operated nursing home.

A FORMER driver with Carlow Emergency Doctors On Call Limited has begun a High Court action for a stress disorder and bullying against the company arising from a series of accidents, deaths and suicides he allegedly was compelled to witness as a result of his job without any proper training.

THE new chairman of the HSE has identified patients’ access to their own medical records and greater use of information technology as key priorities during his term of office.

INDUSTRIAL action is looming in the HSE’s Mid-West region over management plans to get rid of up to 300 health service staff on temporary contracts.

THE dead went online in Limerick yesterday when the city council became the first local authority in the country to put its burial register on the internet.

THE mayor of Co Waterford has extended his sympathies to the family of a man feared drowned after slipping into the River Tiber in Rome.

A close-knit rural community was tonight coming to terms with the tragic loss of a local farmer, missing and feared drowned in Rome.

WHEN Brian Rossiter missed the bus from Clonmel to Wexford on a September Sunday afternoon in 2002, nobody knew that a few days later he would be lying dead in a Cork hospital after a chain of events which still remain shrouded in mystery.

OVERSEAS teachers visiting Limerick got a sharp lesson in violence — shortly after getting a civic reception from the city’s mayor.

CONDITIONS at a psychiatric ward in a Limerick city hospital were described as “appalling and custodial” in the Mental Health Commission’s annual report, published yesterday.

Serious concerns were today raised about the condition of almost a third of the country’s large psychiatric hospitals with many wards battling to keep damp and mould at bay.

A LONG-AWAITED healthcare project with its roots in 1996 was finalised yesterday by Health Minister Mary Harney when she officially opened the amalgamated hospital services in Clonmel.

A MOTHER whose son died after his motorbike helmet failed and fell off during an accident called yesterday for better guarantees from helmet makers.

THE HSE has apologised to the users of a community welfare office that had to be shut down before Christmas on health and safety grounds and whose decaying condition was first raised in the Dáil almost seven years ago.

PATIENTS are being detained on trolleys instead of beds at Tipperary General Hospital because of the Health Service Executive’s (HSE) recruitment freeze, the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) has claimed.

THE Health Service Executive Mid-West was unable to say yesterday if a €5 million centre for disturbed youths, lying idle for nearly seven years, will open next month as planned.

UP to 1,000 people who die in this country from stokes each year could be saved if there were enough specialist stroke unit beds in the health system.

THE Health Service Executive (HSE) Mid-West has rejected a claim by SIPTU that a rehabilitation unit at St Joseph’s Psychiatric Hospital is being shut down without any plans for an alternative facility.

HOSPITALS across Ireland are turning to Britain to fill vacancies ranging from directors of nursing to midwives and general nurses.

AS we prepare to return to our American roots and relations, my husband Tom and I wish to express appreciation of a special place — the daycare centre in Castletownbere, Co Cork.

IRELAND’S largest hospital is expected to be saturated with delayed-discharge patients within months.

THE inquiry into the death of a Co Tipperary teenager who died after falling unconscious in garda custody is expected to conclude in mid-July, a coroners’ court was told yesterday.

HER chair will be empty in the exam hall but the memories 17-year-old Teresa Norris left behind are rich and full.

A 17-YEAR-OLD school girl with no apparent history of illness has died of heart failure a week after developing flu-like symptoms.

THE driver of a car which collided with a goods vehicle at Carr’s Hill, near Cork city, yesterday was last night said to be in a critical condition.

TWO young people died in separate road accidents at the weekend as traffic fatalities continue to soar above the corresponding period in 2004.

RADIOTHERAPY for the people of Waterford and the south-east, based at Waterford Regional Hospital, was a step closer today.

Harlequin Healthcare Holdings has announced the acquisition of Aut Even Private Hospital in Kilkenny.

Jimmy Woulfe, Mid-West Correspondent

A dispute among deer hunters over a tree stand in north-western Wisconsin erupted in a series of shootings that left five people dead and three others injured, officials said.

WARD managers appointing staff to act in their absence are passing over non-nationals in favour of more junior Irish staff, overseas nurses’ representatives have claimed.

Hotel heiress Paris Hilton was taken to hospital after a horse she was riding threw her off and kicked her in the stomach.

THE arrival this week of the winter’s first Arctic snap does not bode well for the blackbird fledgling which has made natural history in a Limerick Christmas tree.

BREAST cancer screening will be in place for women in Carlow, Kilkenny and Waterford by next year and for women nationwide by the end of 2005.

NURSES’ representatives at a Limerick psychiatric hospital claim patients are living in Dickensian accommodation while health board staff occupy plush offices.

Fine Gael has urged Health Minister Micheal Martin to immediately intervene to halt a work-to-rule dispute between the Irish Nurses Organisation and management at St Joseph’s Hospital in Clonmel, Co Tipperary.