Taoiseach Enda kenny has today insisted that the Health Service Executive has a contingency plan to deal with staff departures.

The Taoiseach Enda Kenn has said a claim from a senior Limerick doctor that health service cuts could cost lives is "outrageous".

Doctors working in the country’s maternity services have warned of a threat to the lives of mothers and babies if a predicted exodus of midwives, in an effort to avoid pension cuts, takes place next month.

Ireland’s neonatal and maternal death rates have been a source of pride to the medical community in recent years.

A senior doctor at the Mid-Western Maternity Hospital in Limerick has said the HSE has no plans to deal with 47 midwives leaving the hospital in February, and that mothers and babies may die because of this.

FOURTEEN casualties of the Libyan conflict have arrived in Ireland to undergo treatment for injuries they sustained during the fight to overthrow Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

THE existence of a secret cabal to advise the HSE on the reconfiguration of acute hospital services in the south of the country is, in itself, troubling enough to those who care about democracy.

The only horse ever sired by the late George Washington will go into training with Richard Hannon after she was purchased at the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale at Newmarket this evening.

PIANO Star gave veteran trainer Michael Cunningham a timely pre-Galway boost when landing the 50,000 Ladbrokes Midlands National at Kilbeggan last night.

COMPLETING any educational programme is an achievement in itself, but to successfully finish an internationally-recognised computer course with a near-total visual impairment is another story.

IRISH women are being forced to endure a “woeful” public maternity service, which has the lowest level of consultant obstetricians in the developed world, a leading consultant has warned.

FEARS of a national maternity crisis mounted last night after consultants in Limerick’s only public maternity hospital warned they may be forced to turn women away because they do not have enough staff to ensure safe deliveries.

IT was sunshine all the way for Neil Manchip and Don McFarlane on the sunny southeast as they kept step by step together to share the winner's podium after the two-day Sherry Fitzgerald Reynolds pro-am over the Dungarvan and Gold Coast courses.