Correct.
TDs / Jennifer Carroll MacNeill
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill
Minister for Health
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
0
questions asked
Members of the Government answer questions rather than ask them
182,871
words spoken in the chamber
179,569 as a minister, 3,302 as a TD
355
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
From the Dáil chamber only: committee meetings are not in this archive.
Members of the Government answer parliamentary questions rather than ask them, so this page lists none of theirs.
Month by month
Low months are usually recesses, when the Dáil does not sit. The archive runs to 22 October 2026.
Contributions to debates 710 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Show as a table
| Month | Contributions |
|---|---|
| December 2024 | 0 |
| January 2025 | 0 |
| February 2025 | 19 |
| March 2025 | 40 |
| April 2025 | 20 |
| May 2025 | 52 |
| June 2025 | 52 |
| July 2025 | 44 |
| August 2025 | 0 |
| September 2025 | 7 |
| October 2025 | 59 |
| November 2025 | 56 |
| December 2025 | 11 |
| January 2026 | 57 |
| February 2026 | 9 |
| March 2026 | 51 |
| April 2026 | 45 |
| May 2026 | 11 |
| June 2026 | 14 |
| July 2026 | 60 |
| August 2026 | 0 |
| September 2026 | 12 |
| October 2026 | 91 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 567 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Dún Laoghaire 29 November 2024 to now
- party Fine Gael 29 November 2024 to now
- office Minister for Health 23 January 2025 to now
I find myself in agreement with all of the five points Deputy Daly made, such that I do not believe it is necessary to repeat them. I look forward to working with him on the practical points he has made, particularly in relation to the out of hours framework, the premises structure, what we might do and how we might think about that, and the development of that in terms of a tax-efficient way of encouraging activity.…
Let me be very clear in relation to the recruitment. Any delay should only be in actually finding the consultant orthodontist and bringing them into the system. That does take time because people have to leave posts and so on but there should not be any delay at a HSE level recognising the level of need I have described to the Deputy and have described more broadly.
In relation to GPs generally, we have expanded the…
I thank the Deputy. I am fully committed to ensuring sufficient health care capacity across every part of Ireland. I compliment the work done in the midlands between the triangle of hospitals between Mullingar, Portlaoise and Tullamore, which are all performing at an exceedingly high standard in relation to all aspects of care, both emergency and scheduled. However, we need further development of the elective care ca…
I take this opportunity to compliment Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore and its excellent manager, Louisea Burke, on delivering consistently predictable urgent and emergency care. While it is not easy, they do it with an extraordinary focus on patient care. Mr. Bernard Gloster, CEO of the HSE, visited the hospital recently to compliment them in that regard. Often we attend hospitals where there is a problem but …
I was just reflecting on how Birr primary care centre has evolved since we saw it last summer. I am looking forward to visiting it in quarter 3 of 2026 when it will be operational to see how magnificent it is. For anyone who has not seen it, it is absolutely huge. It will be an enormous addition to primary care for the people of Offaly generally. Of course, it will have extensive GP practices and a pharmacy. It will …
The HSE contracts GPs to provide medical services on its behalf, including GP services under the general medical services, GMS, contract. Over 3,200 GPs hold at least one contract with the HSE, which is a 9% increase compared with January 2020. As GPs are private practitioners, they determine the location from which they provide GP services.
Increasing GP capacity is a priority for the Government. As I said in respo…
I agree with the Deputy. The difficulty, again, is that private GP practices determine their location. That is a challenge. The Deputy is right; we need to try to focus on the primary care centres and enable more GPs to come into the public practice. It is a particularly frustrating area because, of course, plans were advanced for primary care centres, which required planning permission to turn a facility into a prim…
The Deputy is right; we have a challenge in this regard. On the one hand, we cannot tell private GP practices where they should locate. That is a matter for them to determine. At the same time, we want to ensure they locate in areas of need, such as the Deputy’s constituency. He has suggested looking at some measures to create different incentives for GPs to either join a practice or physically extend a practice and …
Haemochromatosis is a hereditary condition, common in Ireland, characterised by an over-absorption of iron from the gastrointestinal tract. Excess iron accumulates in organs including the liver, pancreas and heart, causing damage. I am informed that Ireland has been confirmed as having the highest rate of haemochromatosis worldwide. I am advised by the HSE that the Irish Haemochromatosis Association receives €55,000 …
I do not know what the reasons for that are and why Ireland has the highest rate of it. I would be quite interested to find that out. As the Deputy says, this is a condition that can be managed well, particularly at a primary care level. It is the most common genetic disease here, with one in 83 people genetically predisposed to develop the condition. The symptoms are sort of non-specific and include non-specific fat…
I thank the Deputy for sharing his own experience and perspective because that helps to tell the story of how common this is and what the impact is. We support the Irish Haemochromatosis Association and World Haemochromatosis Awareness Week, which takes place from 1 to 7 June every year. The association also runs the GP practice nurse training and education programme. To the extent we can do so, we will get behind th…
The Healthy Ireland framework provides a number of strategies to ensure everyone in Ireland can enjoy good health as they age, including the national physical activity framework and the obesity policy and action plan. One in three older women and one in five men are affected by osteoporosis. In 2023, the Department published healthy eating guidelines for adults aged 65 and over, which emphasise the importance of a he…
The element of preventative care is crucial from the perspective of diet, lifestyle management and the ways in which people exercise. The gym membership piece is interesting but exercise is available in lots of different ways. I am seeing different forms of community exercise groups. There is a fantastic facility in a GAA centre in south Sligo and in other places. What you are doing is turning up as part of a communi…
We met women with endometriosis at the beginning of September 2025 and this scheme was put in place six weeks later. It was put in place for a specific reason, which was that we wanted to make access to surgeries as easy as possible. There are already two schemes, which are the cross-border directive and the treatment abroad scheme. In many ways those required women to pay upfront when what we wanted to do was pay th…
When a new scheme is established, it must be done in a legally robust way. It is necessary to identify a reason these clinicians and not those clinicians are included. For example, the European Endometriosis League, EEL, and the British Society for Gynaecological Endoscopy, BSGE, criteria were picked. All of those clinics that were on those very defined lists automatically came onto the scheme. The clinics that the D…
We have to keep it clinically safe as well and within the rules for the future.
If I were to come back and give the Deputy the specific reasons there might be a concern about one clinic, she might take a different view. Perhaps we might have that conversation privately, because I suspect she does not have the complete information that I have, which is not a fair balance. We might perhaps speak about that separately.
She is correct that in the past there was a reluctance to refer patients abroad…
But the Deputy did. Let me just be careful. We have clinicians who have been taking their own time to go and see others through surgeries so that they might learn more. We have developed different education pathways and fellowships over the past number of months, particularly with clinicians who really wanted to do better in Ireland and access the opportunity to do better in Ireland. I want to support those clinician…
As the Deputy will be aware, primary care psychology provides a broad range of supports and treatment for mild to moderate mental health conditions. HIs concern is particularly the south Lee area, so I might get to that. Currently 2,445 children and young people under the age of 18 are waiting to access primary care psychology in the south Lee area, with 198 waiting for between 26 and 39 weeks, and 1,792 waiting long…
I am sorry. I did not hear the Deputy.
There were 1,792 waiting longer than 52 weeks.
I agree with the Deputy. We increased the number of psychology doctoral training places to 111 at the end of 2025. This was up from 49 places in 2021. It is not just about the doctoral level. We want to create psychology assistant posts too, where we can make sure that people with a master's degree can work to support doctoral-level psychologists to increase workforce expansion. Not everybody has to have a doctorate.…
I cannot answer that for the Deputy this morning but it is an important question. We might put this series of questions to Andy Phillips in respect of that region. I am sorry I cannot answer that question for the Deputy.
On a point of order, I have to call a quorum because this is of such significance.
The Government has set aside time for statements on a whole range of different things. I call a quorum.