A male patient who left his hospital trolley to buy a coffee in a garage across the road suffered a cardiac arrest and was brought back by ambulance to the same hospital where staff did not recognise him.

The head of the INMO, Liam Doran, has described the midwife to patient ratio at Portlaoise Hospital as "immoral".

It will go down in nursing annals as “Song-gate”, the fatal ministerial quip that immediately killed James Reilly’s chances of escaping, relatively unscathed, from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) annual delegate conference.

Irate nurses have threatened to walk off wards and head “straight to the gate” if the Government imposes further pay cuts.

Nurses have become the latest public sector workers to ratchet up pressure on the Government with threats of industrial action if it imposes pay cuts.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has recorded a 103% rise since 2007 in the number of patients on trolleys at a time when 2,279 hospital beds remain closed.

A mother of one who defrauded almost €99,000 has had her sentence adjourned at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to allow the State to consider psychiatric reports presented by the defence.