Patrick O’Donovan’s wife Eileen is thought to have flown to be at his bedside after the Minister collapsed while on Government business in Brussels.

After a query from EVOKE’s sister paper, The Irish Daily Mail, on Thursday, a spokeswoman for Minister O’Donovan said: ‘I can confirm that the minister became unwell in Brussels on Tuesday night and was taken to hospital.

‘He remains under close medical observation. I would ask you to respect his privacy and that of his family. There will be no further comment at this time.’

The Limerick Fine Gael TD has previously disclosed that he suffers from epilepsy. Speaking following a separate incident in which he collapsed in Dáil Éireann, the Media Minister said he ‘thought he was going to die.’

Mr O’Donovan is the Cabinet Minister for Culture, Communications and the Media and will have seen his already busy schedule further affected by Ireland’s assumption of the EU presidency last week.

A number of senior Government officials and fellow ministers who spoke to the Mail said they are ‘concerned’ for his ‘long-term health’.

‘Patrick has spoken very publicly about his epilepsy, and we have been concerned for him for a while,’ said a fellow minister. ‘This EU presidency has placed additional pressures on us all, and that’s fine.

‘But when somebody collapses like this, it is a big scare. I just hope there are no complications that we don’t know about.’

Despite Ireland holding the EU presidency and hosting a number of events last week, most of the business of the honorific role will be conducted in Brussels and on the continent, imposing additional travel burdens on ministers.

Mr O’Donovan has been seen in Leinster House in recent weeks using a crutch. He has said in the past that he disclosed his epilepsy in the wake of criticism of his work practices.

He is seen as a Cabinet enforcer of Tánaiste Simon Harris and some colleagues have spoken of him as a possible future leader of Fine Gael.

However, Mr O’Donovan, 49, a father of three young children, faces significant health challenges. Speaking to a number of media outlets last year, he said he thought he might be dying during an epileptic episode in Leinster House in June 2023.

He said he was ‘terrified’ when he collapsed in an aggressive fit while speaking in the Dáil Chamber and did not know whether he was going to live or die. Mr O’Donovan said that he has a photosensitivity that manifests itself in epilepsy.

He said at the time that he was revealing his disability following criticism around his level of participation at cultural events.

He said that while speaking in the Dáil Chamber, he started to feel the sensations in his body ‘beginning to go’. He added that he started stuttering ‘really badly’.

While he has had a stutter on occasion since childhood, he added: ‘This was a really bad one. And the next thing, before I knew where I was, all of the power in my limbs was beginning to leave me.’

His condition deteriorated and he ended up lying down on one of the Government benches. The minister said: ‘I could hear everything but I couldn’t see anything and I couldn’t speak and I had no sensation anywhere.’