A team of outside consultants engaged by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to review acute hospital services in the northeast has recommended a brand new hospital be built in the region.
It has not said where exactly this hospital should be located but the proposal is that major specialist services for the region would be centralised at this hospital, allowing greater sharing of expertise within the region.
The region already has five acute hospitals including Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Cavan General Hospital, Monaghan General Hospital, Our Lady's Hospital in Navan, and the Louth County Hospital in Dundalk.
Any suggestion that major services delivered at these five sites be centralised at a new hospital would be likely to result in protests by local action groups fearing the plan would result in their own hospitals being downgraded.
The HSE will begin discussing the plan with staff in the northeast later this week.
The review of acute hospital services in the northeast was carried out by Teamwork Management Services and its report, entitled Improving Safety and Achieving Better Standards, was discussed at length at a meeting of the HSE board last Thursday.
There was also debate on where the new hospital might be located. It is likely a special committee will now be set up to identify the most appropriate site for the new hospital.
The HSE said the report provided a detailed assessment of hospital services and a future direction for health services in the region.
The review, which is understood to be highly critical of many aspects of the way in which hospital services are currently delivered in the northeast, was commissioned in the wake of the outcry last October when 75-year-old Patrick Joseph Walsh bled to death in Monaghan General Hospital.
He required emergency surgery on a bleeding ulcer but could not be operated on in Monaghan as surgeons there are not permitted to do emergency surgery.
Staff attempted to transfer him to three other hospitals - Cavan, Drogheda, and Beaumont in Dublin - but were told none of these had an intensive-care bed available, which he would require after his operation.
It transpired after his death that all three hospitals had vacant intensive-care beds.
An inquiry was ordered and its final report is now with the HSE's legal team. It is expected to be published shortly.
There have been several other controversies involving hospitals in the northeast.
A number of them followed adverse incidents at the surgical unit in Cavan General Hospital.
And a recent report by risk management consultants called for an urgent review of the types of surgery carried out at Our Lady's Hospital, Navan.
The report raised concerns about whether it was safe for the hospital to continue doing limited numbers of certain types of operations.
The Lourdes Hospital Inquiry report, written by Judge Maureen Harding Clark and published earlier this year, also highlighted several other issues of concern at that hospital.
Her report also recommended a new hospital for the northeast region.
It said: "The time has come for the planners of the health needs of the northeastern region to provide a centrally located new hospital . . .
"Perhaps the project design team will consider locating the proposed new regional hospital in a green-field site equidistant from the major towns in the region."