A global Microsoft outage is affecting email and other systems used by the Irish College of GPs. As a result, members may experience delays in receiving replies to emails sent to the College over the coming days.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and thank members for their patience while services are restored.
What happened
The outage began on Thursday and has affected millions of Microsoft users, organisations and businesses worldwide, with disruption lasting more than 12 hours.
In an update shortly after 7 am GMT today, Microsoft said it is “seeing positive results” for server stability. It has applied a fix to part of its infrastructure and is extending it to further servers as regions come back online. The company is also working to increase capacity so that more users can regain access.
What this means for members
While Microsoft restores full service, College staff may have limited or intermittent access to email. Replies to member queries may therefore take longer than usual.
Healthmail is not available due to this issue. GPs and Pharmacists may use plain paper prescriptions. Special stationary is not required. To help us manage the backlog:
- Please avoid resending emails. Messages sent during the outage should be delivered once service resumes, and duplicates can slow our response.
- Allow extra time for a reply. We will work through queries in the order received as soon as access is restored.
- For urgent matters, please contact the relevant College department by phone on +35316763705.
If you have not received a reply within two day of services returning to normal, please get in touch again.
Further updates
The College is monitoring the situation closely and will post updates here as Microsoft restores service. Thank you for your understanding.