Simon Harris travelling to Cork today to meet hospital consultants

Concerns are being raised over extremely long delays for women seeking treatment at Cork University Maternity Hospital.

Over 4,000 women are affected with more than 900 waiting over 18 months for treatment.

Health Minister Simon Harris is travelling to Cork today to meet with hospital consultants.

The Irish Examiner's Catherine Shanahan says the crisis affects women seeking treatment for a range of gynaecological conditions, including potential cancers: "They're on a waiting list, they haven't got an appointment yet to be seen, which means they could have anything.

"Of those women there are going to be a certain cohert that there are going to be malignancies so you know, what the consultants are saying is that we have all these women on a waiting list, there is no way of knowing what they have and some of them are going to have more serious conditions than others."