New plan to be developed for Portlaoise hospital

The Health Minister says a new action plan will be developed for the Midlands Regional Hospital in Portlaoise in the coming weeks.

Leo Varadkar has promised to implement all of the findings of the HIQA report published today, into conditions at Portlaoise.

The report outlines systematic failures in the quality of treatment, despite previous warnings.

Minister Varadkar says there are a number of ways that services at Portlaoise can be improved and strengthened: "What we need to do in the next couple of weeks is to develop a new action plan for Portlaoise that will ensure that all services that are viable are safe and properly resourced.

"And if services are not viable, because there are not enough patients to support them, well then those services will have to be discontinued."