More than 1,500 people took to the streets in Cork today to protest against Home Help cutbacks.

Home help workers took to the streets of Cork over the weekend to voice their anger at cutbacks to the service at both a national and local level.

SIPTU has said that yesterday's ambulance crash highlights the need for the on-call system for paramedics to be abolished.

The HSE is investigating how a paramedic who was working 22 hours in a row fell asleep at the wheel of an ambulance — writing off the €100,000-plus vehicle.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation says it will resist new cost saving measures announced yesterday by the HSE as they jeopardise patient safety.

AMBULANCE cover in Cork city on a Saturday night could be reduced to just two ambulances between 8pm and 8am, under cost-cutting plans by the HSE.

HEALTH chiefs have been accused of “playing Russian Roulette with people’s lives” in Cork and Kerry.

THE HSE has been accused of “playing Russian Roulette with people’s lives” after proposing to cut night cover at almost half of its 15 ambulance bases in Cork and Kerry.

UP to 40 jobs will be lost in a factory in Tralee, Co Kerry, with the closure of two production lines, it has emerged.