UPDATE 4.30PM

CORK MEDICAL CENTRE (CMC) has been closed today with staff contracts suspended for the next four weeks pending talks to save the hospital.

TheJournal.ie has learned that while there is a meeting of TDs in the Dáil this evening regarding the situation VHI will not be coming to meet with the group and that staff have been informed of the situation today.

The centre is now ‘effectively closed’ from today according to a source.

Earlier the VHI rejected a ‘price-match’ offer from the developers of Cork Medical Centre (CMC) fighting to save its closure.

The country’s newest was facing closure and the prospect of laying off 75 staff after its operator, Sheehan Medical, failed to strike a deal with VHI over services to offer to members.

VHI maintain it is not giving cover to new private hospitals in Ireland including CMC, the newest.

Sheehan Medical had offered to match terms and conditions agreed by the VHI with St Vincent’s private hospital in Dublin recently but the VHI said that this was “not relevant,” reports the Irish Examiner.

Read more of Eoin English’s story in today’s print edition of the Irish Examiner >