An independent investigation into concerns that ambulances are arriving dangerously late to call-outs because of chronic service shortages has been brought forward three months due to the serious issues involved.

The HSE’s repeated failure to meet life-saving ambulance target times is set to be examined by the country’s independent medical watchdog.

HSE director general Tony O’Brien has claimed it will take until the summer to teach all doctors and nurses basic hand hygiene standards after yet another hospital dirt scandal.

A cross-border manhunt is under way after two elderly sisters were targeted by a gang who robbed their home.

Forty-nine elderly people have been taken to hospital in Donegal after the bus in which they were travelling crashed into a car.

A man has been shot in the arms and legs in an apparent punishment attack in Donegal.

THE HSE spent a massive €26 million on locum doctors to fill chronic staff shortages across public hospitals in the first half of this year.

A horror crash in which eight men died was today called the worst on record in the Republic of Ireland.

Prayers were offered today after eight men were killed in one of the worst road accidents in the history of the state.

AN investigation by the Health Service Executive (HSE) is under way after hospital patients’ medical details were found dumped in an alleyway.

A YOUNG man killed yesterday during a high-speed Garda pursuit on the Donegal border was facing a Real IRA death threat.

A man was shot and left for dead on a remote mountain in Co Donegal after being attacked by suspected drug dealers.

A WOMAN and her three children were taken to hospital in Cork last night after the car in which they were travelling was struck by a lorry.

Reports this morning said a 50-year-old woman was transferred from Dublin to Letterkenny General Hospital by minibus rather than ambulance after having a cancerous lung removed.

One man died tonight following a horrific collision between a bus and a car on the main road from Dublin to Wexford.

It was a mistake not to preserve the scene of cattle dealer Riche Barron’s death, a garda admitted at the Morris Tribunal today.

An 80-year-old man has died from injuries he sustained in a car crash last month.

A teenage boy was among three people killed in a two-car collision in Co Donegal near the Northern Ireland border, gardaí said tonight.

A gardai investigation is expected to continue later this morning into the death of a newborn infant whose body was found in a dump in north Dublin yesterday.

Six people have been killed in road accidents in the last 24 hours.

Three people died in two fatal road accidents overnight.

Six people are recovering this morning, after their trawler sank on Lough Swilly yesterday evening.