Dublin’s Mater Misericordiae University Hospital was facing a second day of chaos on Wednesday, July 31, after “a systems problem” prevented access to electronic health records.

On Tuesday, the hospital issued a statement diverting people away from its emergency department and rapid injury clinic. It asked the public to avoid its emergency department where possible and warned that patients with non-urgent conditions were likely to experience lengthy waiting times to be seen.

The Mater’s Rapid Injury Clinic in Smithfield has also been impacted and is currently closed.

In an updated statement the hospital said a small number of surgical cases have had to be deferred as a result of the EHR outage and impacted patients have been contacted directly to let them know. The hospital plans to reschedule these surgeries in the coming days.

Outpatient appointments have so far been unaffected by the IT issues.

Details of the exact nature of the “systems problem” have not yet been released but it is understood that the issues affecting the Mater’s IT system are not as a result of a malicious attack.

The hospital has apologised to the public for any inconvenience caused to patients and says it is “doing everything it can to rectify the issue as quickly as possible”.

The hospital is currently using an in-house legacy EHR system. In 2022, the Mater Hospital was included in an Ireland East Hospital Group procurement process for EHR solutions.

It was initially expected that the contract would begin in the second quarter of 2023 but no announcement has been made on a preferred vendor.