An issue with road access has been resolved, meaning plans can now progress on the elective hospital in Glanmire, which will focus exclusively on scheduled care.

Hiqa inspector observed residents’ day-to-day care needs at Horizons were being met, but high turnover of agency staff was causing problems.

€5 million has been allocated for the development of a new ambulance base and headquarters to serve Cork city and county.

The new €2m Midleton facility will be a specialised, community-based day centre for individuals with physical, sensory, or intellectual disabilities.

In the 2025 capital plan, €1.2m was also awarded to progress the elective hospital and, in the most recent plan, an allocation of €2.2m for the elective hospital, to take it to design feasibility stage, was announced.

Planning permission was granted for the six-storey extension in 2022. Frustration has been growing at delays in starting the works.

Data provided by health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill shows that in HSE South West, covering Cork and Kerry, the mean wait time — the combined wait time divided by the amount of patients — is 205 days.

Prolonged waiting times are overwhelmingly concentrated among children over five and adolescents, which represent 89% of the total waiting list. 

The 37-bed Blair’s Hill private nursing home in Sunday’s Well is set to close on March 31, bringing the number of nursing home beds closed in Cork to 197 since September 2022.

The nursing homes are part of a €250m seven-unit public-private partnership (PPP) between venture company Equisisk (John Sisk & Sons with Equitix).

The HSE’s south-west branch is encouraging the public to familiarise themselves with other urgent care options, such as their local GP or SouthDoc.

The more than 35 residents of the Blair’s Hill Nursing Home in Sunday’s Well may have to be relocated to locations in the county due to a shortage of beds in the city

Despite a slight increase in numbers last year, Cork senator Laura Harmon says  the development of ovarian and uterine cancer-screening services needs to be prioritised.

A third of all attendances at Cork University Hospital's emergency department on weekend nights are due to alcohol.

Healthcare assistants in the HSE home support service will implement 24-hour work stoppages in Cork and Kerry on February 19 and 26.

Inspectors raised concerns about issues including fire escape routes, staffing levels, and residents rights. 

A Cork representative believes that the strike action by those working as Health Care Assistants (HCAs) in the HSE Home Support Service will have an effect on hospital overcrowding.

The vaccine is aimed at children between the ages of two years old and 17 years old.

The CUH figures include 65 people without a bed in the Emergency Department and 25 without a bed elsewhere in the hospital, the highest number of patients on trolleys in Ireland.

This comes amid claims that the lack of progress on the facility is contributing to increasingly high trolley figures in Cork University Hospital.

366 of these were treated in Cork University Hospital, 108 in Mercy University Hospital, and 51 in Bantry General Hospital.

CUH spend nearly eight times that of hospital average on debt collectors.

The CUH figure contributes to the nationwide total of 114,029 patients, including 1,248 children, who were admitted to hospital without a bed in 2025.

Baby Ali was born through a process known as reciprocal IVF, during which Ranae Von Meding, 38, became pregnant with an embryo created using an egg from her wife Audrey and donor sperm.

HSE South West Disability Services confirmed that there are 138 adults on the waiting list for overnight respite in Cork, with 103 of these on the waiting list for more than 12 months.

According to the data, Cork University Hospital (CUH) has the highest number of locum consultants at 51.

Dave Healy, originally from Blarney and now living in Carrigaline with his wife Sarah St Leger and their two children, aged four and two, spent over two and a half years attending dialysis treatment at Cork University Hospital (CUH).

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Irish peacekeepers stationed at Camp Shamrock in South Lebanon on Saturday, Mr Martin said the flu was “a matter of ongoing concern” for the HSE and the Government.

St Michael’s unit at Mercy University Hospital had the most episodes of physical restraint in Cork, and was the only service which saw figures increase in 2024, to 66, up from 63 the previous year.

Two Cork healthcare workers, who contracted covid while working during the pandemic, fear the consequences if a special pay scheme is stopped and are hoping for a ‘Christmas miracle’, they tell Amy Campbell

The vacancies includes 117.87 whole time equivalent (WTE) patient and client care staff and 49.67 health and social care professionals.

Blackpool based GP Dr John Sheehan said the number of people attending Southdoc has doubled in the past week. 

In 2025, just 11 of the 13 allocated counselling staff members were in place.

An AON is an assessment to determine the presence of a disability and what health and educational services are required as a result. Of the 760 AONs carried out in Cork this year, just 52 have been within the legal timeline.

This is up 46% from the previous week with 263 cases, while hospitalisations increased 37% from 51 in week 48.

Residents living in Farranlea Road Community Nursing Unit gave positive feedback about the quality of care they received in the centre, and said staff were “helpful, caring, and kind”.

Daily trolley figures released by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation show that there were 31 people being treated on trolleys in CUH and 29 in the Mercy yesterday.

The HSE said they are working on a proposal for a new 75-bed acute mental health service on the grounds of St Stephen’s Hospital in Glanmire.

Currently, most patients requiring rehabilitative care are forced to travel to the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire for treatment.

In Cork and Kerry 5,794 of the completed checks did not occur in time, or 15.8% of the total.

By 2040, between 136 and 173 additional GPs will be needed, an increase of 23% to 29%, due to projected population growth.

The information was provided to Independent Ireland TD Ken O’Flynn, who asked the minister for health if staffing levels were adequate in Arbour House, and asked for the average waiting time for a service user to be assessed and assigned an addiction counsellor.

Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould, to whom the information was provided, told The Echo: “We were told this unit would be open by the end of the year. What we’re hearing now is that registration needs to happen, and it’s not clear whether staff have already been recruited."

The issue was raised in the Dáil this week by Social Democrats TD Pádraig Rice, who called on Jennifer Murnane O’Connor, minister of state for public health, wellbeing and the national drugs strategy, to act without delay.

The current amount of beds would need to increase by around 3% each year for both short and long-term beds to reach the projected demand figure by 2040, ESRI researchers predicted.

Two dead swans and a dead duck were removed from The Lough over the weekend.

Louise Crowley is a lecturer at University College Cork and a mother of three, and at the age of 17 she was diagnosed with lupus.

The comments come following a motion raised at the most recent meeting of the HSE South West Regional Health Forum, held last week at Cork County Hall.

The total number of people waiting for a first-time neurosurgery appointment at CUH to 5,208.

In 2023, the HSE screened just more than 166,000 women, falling short of a 185,000 target.