Checking your symptoms online rather than visiting the family doctor is leading to growing levels of “cyberchondria” — where patients believe themselves to be far sicker than they actually are.

Members of the Irish Medical Organisation are gathering in Sligo today for their council's AGM.

Doctors say the next Government is facing an unprecedented crisis in the health service.

The next government will inherit “a crisis of enormous proportions” in the health services, doctors have warned.

Doctors have warned that any attempt to impose a “one size fits all approach” to the crisis in hospital emergency departments will not work.

The Public Health (Alcohol) Bill is a crucial response to one of our most significant public health problems. Alcohol misuse claims three lives every day in Ireland and we all know someone who has been affected in a harmful way by alcohol use — it is all too common.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheal Martin has accused the Government of standing over a “fraudulent” health budget which has the sole intention of whitewashing the health crisis before the general election.

Doctors have described the swapping around of medical card numbers by the Health Service Executive in its national service plan as “farcical”.

The health minister has been accused of placing patients at the mercy of profit margins after admitting he is in favour of contracting out the management of under- performing public hospitals to private companies.

Most of the details of how money will actually be spent under next year’s health budget will not be available until publication of the HSE Service Plan 2016, the health minister said yesterday.

On the basis of the abysmal failure to radically reform our health service, as so faithfully promised in 2011, Fine Gael deserve not to be re-elected to Government, says Alison O’Connor.

An alliance of doctors, HSE experts, youth leaders,and campaigners are backing an Oireachtas Health Committee report on the forthcoming Alcohol Bill.

A doctors’ group has called for an immediate ban on alcohol sports sponsorship.

The President of the IMO, Dr Ray Walley, said the Government still refuses to address the fundamental principle of equal pay for equal work.

The HSE faces the headache of processing over a quarter of a million applications for free GP care for children under six by July.

Some medical card patients, unable to afford prescription charges, are not taking vital medication and suffering strokes as a result, research will show.

Doctors agreed a deal allowing free GP care for under-6s after the Government increased its payment by €30m to €67m — an 81% increase, it emerged yesterday.

More rural and deprived urban areas will be left without doctors in the coming years because Government cutbacks are making GP practices unviable, the Irish Medical Organisation has warned.

The Department of Health has denied claims that the Government is planning to force patients to purchase private health insurance for GP services.

Cancer patients have criticised the Government’s high-profile medical card system reform plan, warning the changes have failed to change the focus on an applicant’s income, have left people in the dark and effectively allow the Coalition to "put a plaster over a wound that needs urgent surgical attention".

Doctors working in emergency medicine have rejected claims that they are sending patients home who should be in hospital.

The Taoiseach has said ways must be found to deliver on promised healthcare reforms after Health Minister Leo Varadkar cast doubt over plans to give free GP care to children under six by the end of this year.

Government plans to introduce free GP care for everyone in Ireland could be delayed by a decade because of doctors’ compensation and resource demands.

The Government is under pressure to remove the prescription drugs charge and avoid new GP fees after an EU report found such costs can damage people’s health and do not save the system money.

Older people had lost their medical cards in the past year without a proper financial assessment, a patients’ advocate claimed.

Doctors are to seek an urgent meeting with the new health minister, expected to be appointed today, to discuss plans to roll out free GP care to all over-70s.

Hope was rising last night that some of the people who had medical cards snatched away over the past 18 months could see them returned after the Cabinet discussed the "difficulty" caused by the controversy.

Medical cards could easily be restored to the thousands who had already lost them before the review process was halted last week, according to the chairman of the GP Committee of the Irish Medical Organisation.

A row between the Irish Medical Organisation and the Competition Authority over whether the union could negotiate collective agreements has ended in the IMO giving an undertaking not to organise or recommend a collective withdrawal of services or boycott by members.

The Irish Medical Organisation says it has reached a "highly significant" deal which will allow it to represent GPs in contract talks with the Government.

Junior Health Minister Alex White today faced "robust" questions from doctors at the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) annual conference over plans for free GP care for children under the age of six.

The Irish Medical Organisation has claimed legislation to facilitate free GP care for the under-sixes is “draconian” and “an attempt to unilaterally re-write the relationship between GPs and the HSE”.

The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) says it will consider Junior Health Minister Alex White' request to agree a framework for negociations regarding free GP care for under-6s.

Government plans to extend free GP visit cards to children under six could “overwhelm” family doctors’ surgeries.

The Irish Medical Organisation has hit out at the Minister for Health James Reilly over the free GP scheme, calling him the 'Minister for non-engagement'

A Government target for providing free GP visits for kids under six this summer is "not achievable", according to the GP committee of the Irish Medical Organisation.

Doctors have claimed the HSE failed to tell them about potentially fatal flaws in how two blood-thinning drugs to fight stroke are being used on 4,000 people — despite officials knowing about the problems since last week.

Doctors have threatened to seek a High Court injunction to stop the Department of Health from changing GP contracts without talks.

A doctors’ group says the Government’s plan to introduce free GP care for children under six is politically motivated and will be impossible to implement in its current form.

The Government published a new draft contract for the provision of free GP care for all children aged under six yesterday evening.