As hospitals brace themselves for industrial action, the country’s largest nursing union has called on the public to join in a major protest outside the Dáil today to highlight emergency department (ED) overcrowding.

A "significant" number of hospital consultants are set to sue the State over millions of euro in unpaid salary rises they claim are owed to them since 2008.

The President of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association says crude frontline budget cuts are having disastrous effects on patients.

The president of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association is welcoming Leo Varadkar as the new Minister for Health.

DOCTORS have called for an extra 1,200 acute hospital beds to help resolve serious capacity problems in the system.

THE National Treatment Purchase Fund has resulted in patients on waiting lists with conditions such as cancer being denied treatment in favour of those with non-life threatening conditions such as hernias and joint replacements, a consultant has claimed.

I NOTE your shock-horror headline ‘20 years to clear hospital backlog’ (Irish Examiner, August 6). Actually the reality is worse.