In 1935 they designed Portlaoise General Hospital. This building unlike its predecessor, does away with traditional massing and materials. It is a flat roofed, white plastered horizontal structure that ultimately fails to be as interesting as its mixed breed ancestor. Again strongly symmetrical, the entrance is flanked by two stripped down columns supporting protruding masses. The rear elevation is much more successful with a strong horizontal linearity. Both hospitals have symmetrical plans, with Portlaoise being designed with the operating theatre in the centre of a 'H' plan. After a while Scott consciously tried to avoid taking on any more hospital jobs in order not to become labelled as a hospital architect. He claimed to be so successful at this that he was not asked to design one afterwards.

In 1935 a competition was held to design new offices for the Department of Industry and Commerce in Kildare Street, Dublin. Scott and Good submitted their entry only to be unplaced. The journalist and architect John O'Gorman (born 1908), writing under the pseudonym Wisbech in The Irish Builder and Engineer, wrote of the results that 'he found it a complete mystery why the scheme submitted by Michael Scott and Norman D. Good was neither placed nor commended' adding:

[it] was encouraging, however, to note several schemes from young (and in some cases not yet qualified) architects which to my mind showed a sounder grasp of the realities of architectural design than those which came from men who have for years acted as councillors, examiners and assessors.

O'Gorman went on to write that the elevations of the Scott and Good entry were 'outstanding' reminding him that 'this is the year nineteen-thirty-six and that Ireland is not entirely cut off from cultural movements on the continent'. A major fault with the design according to Wisbech seems to have been its height, in that the cubic office capacity other entrants got into four storeys, Scott and Good got into seven. He also mentions that 'there was evidently no cheese-paring' on grounds of cost - an early indication of Scott's refusal to compromise his work. It seems that Scott and Good placed their design back from the building line on the street, creating a small plaza in front, as Wisbech refers to the footpath being carried over the site, adding dignity to the design. The winner was Basil Boyd Barrett, who was also a student at Jones and Kelly at the same time as Scott.

Scott and Good were also responsible in association with the London architect Leslie Norton between 1934 and 1935 for some flamboyant exercises in Art Deco Cinemas in Dublin - the Theatre Royal, College Street and the smaller Regal Cinema next door to it. Scott, although not responsible for the interior design or exterior form of the building, was responsible for the commissioning of artists to produce work for the building. Scott commissioned the sculptor Laurence Campbell to produce a triptych relief panel of 'Mother Éire' for the front of the Theatre Royal. Scott was to use the work of Campbell often to decorate his buildings in the future.