THE HSE HAS been in talks with medical representative groups this morning to ensure that prescriptions can get to patients as Healthmail, the HSE’s national clinical email service, is down due to the global Microsoft outage. 

An HSE spokesperson said that the HSE has put in place “alternative arrangements” with the Irish Medical Organisation, the Irish College of General Practitioners and the Irish Pharmacy Union to ensure that scripts are being received. 

The spokesperson said that there are also issues with emails not being transmitted to patients, so some people may experience delays in getting responses today. 

“There are also intermittent problems with Microsoft video conferencing facilities,” they added. 

A National Ambulance Service source said that while internal email systems have been affected, there is no known disruption to 999 calls, which have been reported as an issue in the UK. 

The Embassy of Ireland in Britain also posted on X to let people know it is currently unable to respond to queries via email. 

Cork County Council also posted to let people know that some of their online services will be affected, and a representative for Dublin City Council said that this is also the case for their site, as staff in both councils cannot access their emails. 

Outlook and other Microsoft services are down for users around the world this morning, as the company works to resolve an outage that began late on Thursday.

The disruption has affected access to email, alongside parts of Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft has said it was not aware of any “malicious activity” behind the hours-long disruption.

“As of now, we are not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident. We will continue to treat this incident with urgency and priority until full resolution,” Microsoft said.