{"id":563562,"date":"2026-07-23T02:21:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T02:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/563562\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T02:21:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T02:21:28","slug":"media-minister-patrick-odonovan-to-return-to-work-in-september","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/563562\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Minister Patrick O&#8217;Donovan to return to work in September"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CULTURE AND MEDIA Minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan is set to return to his duties in September after taking ill earlier this month, a government spokesperson has confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Donovan became unwell and was hospitalised in Belgium earlier this month before being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/patrick-odonovan-flown-to-ireland-7098277-Jul2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">flown back to Ireland on the government\u2019s private jet a few days later<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Asked for an update on the minister\u2019s health today, a government spokesperson said he continues to convalesce at home, with a number of events he was due to attend cancelled or postponed.<\/p>\n<p>The spokesperson said O\u2019Donovan is \u201cstill continuing to fulfil his statutory responsibility as minister\u201d and will resume his full duties in September \u201call going well\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The minister has previously spoken about being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/patrick-odonavan-thought-he-might-die-dail-6754851-Jul2025\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">diagnosed with epilepsy in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He previously spoke out about being \u201cterrified\u201d when he collapsed in an aggressive seizure while speaking in the D\u00e1il chamber in June 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CULTURE AND MEDIA Minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan is set to return to his duties in September after taking ill&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[238178,61,60,175331,43,13400],"class_list":["post-563562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-department-of-arts-and-media","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-media-minister","tag-news","tag-patrick-o"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}