It is thought thousands of people are not registered with any GP with up to 70% of practices too busy to accept new patients in recent years.

The HSE is asking people to keep 999 and 112 for emergencies only and says out-of-hours doctors cannot order tests.

Doctors are no longer accepting walk-in appointments in a bid to protect staff and patients from coronavirus.

The patient is a woman in the east of the country who recently travelled back from northern Italy.

Any plan to have GPs working alongside consultants in hospital emergency departments could result in an 'extraordinarily efficient service' but it will not work as a stop-gap measure, according to a leading GP in Cork.

The National Women’s Council of Ireland is calling for the urgent introduction of safety zone legislation ahead of a planned 40-day prayer vigil outside the National Maternity Hospital by campaigners opposed to abortion.

Repealing the Eighth Amendment removed the ban on women accessing abortion in Ireland. But, one year on, issues such as the three-day waiting period mean that some women still cannot fully access the care they need, writes Joyce Fegan.

"No more isolation. The burden of shame is gone."

An attempt to involve family doctors in reducing long waiting times for women with a distressing gynae- cological problem has failed after GPs said that they were not prepared to take on additional unpaid work.

Up to 500 hospital consultants have lodged papers in court seeking compensation for the State’s failure to pay higher salaries agreed in 2008, according to the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO).

The threat of families switching to a new doctor if their GP chooses to opt out of treating under-6s for free is likely to be one of the key deciding factors in whether doctors sign up.

The country’s abortion laws are once again under the spotlight, with all sides in the debate calling for legislation passed less than a year ago to be scrapped.

Family doctors who are members of the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) have voted in favour of a motion calling for women pregnant with non-viable foetal anomalies to have access to legal abortion in the Republic.

Doctors for Choice welcomes steps to deal with the X Case.

Savita Halappanavar was a tragic victim of our State’s restrictive legal position on abortion.

Women owe Drs Mary Favier and Mark Murphy a vote of thanks for trying to drag the Irish Medical Organisation into the 21st century.

Doctors have rejected a motion to support legislation for abortion where there is a “real and substantial risk’’ to the life of the mother, in line with the X case.

A GP who has devoted his career to caring for a city’s homeless population has been honoured.

A CLINICAL guide to abortion care has been published for the first time in Ireland by a group of pro-choice doctors.

Pro-choice doctors have submitted proposals to the Irish Medical Council calling for the removal of its ban on abortion

RAPE prosecutions have collapsed because inexperienced and ill-trained GPs are being drafted in to carry out specialist forensic examinations, the Mid-Western Health Board claims.