The Health Service Executive is preparing to announce that A&E departments at three hospitals in the midwest are to close and be replaced with "nurse-led minor injuries units".
Sources say the A&Es at Ennis, Nenagh and at St John's voluntary hospital, Limerick, will be named as the three to close following a review of A&E departments nationwide by British-based consultants Teamwork. The announcement is expected in the next three weeks.
The news comes just two months after a leaked document revealed that A&Es in the northeast are also set to close.
Facilities at Monaghan and Dundalk are reportedly due to close next year while the A&E unit at Our Lady's Hospital in Navan will shut, probably the following year.
A&E services at these hospitals will be transferred to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and Cavan General Hospital.
The report will recommend that A&E services at Ennis, Nenagh and Limerick will move to the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick while the facilities will be replaced by "nurse- led minor injury units."
It is not clear whether these units will be open on a 24-hour basis.
Clare Fine Gael TD Pat Breen, has called on Taoiseach Bertie Ahern "to shred this report, live up to their election commitments or lives will be lost".
"If these reports are true, then Ennis hospital will effectively become a 12-hour nurse-led injury clinic," Mr Breen said. "While acknowledging the outstanding role that nurses play in the hospital and the care and attention given by them to their patients, the failure to provide 24-hour consultant-led A&E will mean that lives will be lost."
Councillor and PRO of the Ennis General Hospital development committee Brian Meaney said: "There is no way that the A&E at Ennis will close . . . The HSE can choose and quote any model of best practice they want but they cannot remove critical emergency resources from large parts of the population. We will fight this and if it means marching on the Dáil we will."