Deputy Cullinane and I were paying tribute to the ambulance service and its response in Waterford over the last number of days. We both acknowledged that we would come back to this question on the basis that it was also an issue that had to be addressed. That is what happened earlier.
I want to state at the outset my complete support for Major General Maureen O'Brien and the work she has done and will do in addressi…
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
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| 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 do not necessarily accept that but I will reflect on what the Deputy has said, of course, as I always would. From my engagement with her, I find her to be extremely strong and capable. She has the experience of a hierarchical uniformed organisation. As I said, I have great confidence in her ability to do it, and do it appropriately. I thank the Deputy for raising that.
It is important to acknowledge the enormous progress that has happened in the past 12 months in the emergency department at Beaumont. It is very significant. It has reduced the number of people on trolleys by an impressive 33% compared with 2024, despite having an increase in presentations. That is down to the different way the staff are working. I pay tribute to them for it.
An additional CT machine was put in Beau…
I do not know how it is obfuscation. Let me give the Deputy a one, two, three instead. Number one is the radiation oncology centre, number two is the inpatient bed block and number three is the emergency department. That order is identified as a priority by Beaumont, not me. The hospital chose that order of priority.
The Deputy will be aware that planning approval was granted in 2026 for the refurbishment of the exi…
This is the order the hospital has identified as being important to it for patient flow. Would the Deputy like me to override the hospital's priorities and its analysis of what it needs?
The emergency department performance has improved considerably over the last 18 months. When I was there on a Saturday morning, I saw 60 to 70 people who needed care. Six or seven of those would have been able to be let go with a CT scan. A decision could have been made to do so but the scanner was not working. The hospital now has it working. The performance in the emergency department has improved, although patient…
The HSE knows how many nurses and midwives are due to graduate each year. It is completely known, and it must plan its recruitment accordingly. Retaining these new qualified graduates is essential to the future of the health service and continues to be a priority. To be clear, there is no recruitment embargo in the HSE. Recruitment has not been stopped. There are strengthened recruitment controls, including in the we…
It is important to say that staffing in the region has increased by 478 to date this year.
Of that, nursing and midwifery has been the largest contributor to that growth. There are 226 new nurses and midwives to date this year. Galway has recorded significant growth, with an additional 132 people hired, of whom 93 are nurses and midwives.
What the Deputy is saying is completely correct. Every single year, nurses an…
Is that not the most reasonable and professional expectation they should have? Deputy Kyne is completely right. They should know they have a position within the region and what that will be. As I said, it might not be directly in Galway but it will be within the region where they are needed. On 1 January of every year, each region knows it has a certain number of people it can recruit. It also knows it has a certain …
I thank the Deputy. I have met some of the team of the adult diabetes multidisciplinary service at Regional Hospital Mullingar, who provide excellent care in both scheduled and unscheduled access to specialist diabetes nursing and multidisciplinary support for patients with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The Deputy is of course correct that the hospital had to temporarily suspend the adult day diabetes service with…
I understand those concerns. I understand also the level of fundraising and community support that has gone into the service and I acknowledge that too. I do not know the answer to the redeployment question but I will check with the regional executive office and come back to the Deputy on that. Redeployment would be better in the region given that it has an overspend. Mullingar, in particular, has a very high agency …
I thank the Deputy. The whole point of this service is to provide holistic management for patients with diabetes. As the Deputy says, that includes people being trained or waiting on insulin pumps and the dose adjustment for normal eating education programmes. These are the impacts and this is a good service that really supports people in an holistic way. We really want to make sure it is re-established. The vacancie…
I agree. With recruitment for specialist posts, if somebody is in a position in a different place and there are notice periods, it can be more difficult than recruiting a nurse who is not in a specialist position, but we still need to have it.
I thank the Deputy for his question and for acknowledging that there is no area of care where there is more public subvention into private care than maternity care, realistically. I can go through the costs in great detail but that is the reality of it. However, I do recognise this is a change and change causes concern. Change in respect of maternity care causes particular concern because there is nothing that motiva…
The Deputy ran on an election manifesto that supports Sláintecare and this is a key part of that which predates the Deputy's entry into the Dáil. I know he is very much an advocate for Sláintecare and for an equitable system within which all women can access the same quality care, as I know he is an advocate for not enabling private work to, as he said, piggyback on the public system.
The reality is there is no barr…
How would the Deputy fund that? What would the additional cost of that be to every taxpayer and patient in Ireland? How is that equitably distributed? I was in the Women's Health Hub in Tralee, a new place dedicated to women's health, speaking to women who have received continuity of care through midwife-led care and who have escalated and de-escalated through the clinical pathways based on changing need. For example…
I thank the Deputy. The target for symptomatic breast disease clinics is that 95% of urgent referrals are offered an appointment within ten working days. In 2025, the national performance was 61.3%. The national year to date performance in 2026 now stands at 78%, and while this represents improvement, I recognise, and the Deputy is correct to articulate it, that this falls short of the standard patients should expect…
I thank the Deputy. I completely agree with him. I am pleased to see the improvement in Cork and Beaumont and the consistently good work in the other clinics. There cannot be a postcode lottery. It cannot be the case that people have different expectations. As I said, while there has been progress from 61% in 2025 to 78% in 2026, we have additional funding into next year. It is a priority for the cancer control progr…
I appreciate that. There is no closure of the scheme. Some senior midwives are on maternity leave and the service has been reorganised to make sure the right people are in the right place according to clinical need. Some midwives have moved to the labour ward. It is very much a temporary solution. Women will continue to be supported through the early transfer home midwifery team, which is very important. We are fully…
Neither the Deputy nor I live in that region but obviously I have had the benefit of studying the recruitment growth in the region for some time and the south-west region has recruited more than any other. It has recruited more than Deputy Clarke's region, Deputy Dolan's region or those of Deputies Byrne and Neville. It recruited nearly 800 people in the first part of the year so the idea there are vacancies or servi…
There is no difficulty. I acknowledge the scheme has changed on a temporary basis but women continue to be supported through the early transfer home midwifery team. The scheme has changed on a temporary basis arising from redeployment within the model in the maternity hospital generally, arising from specific maternity absences. However, that hospital has had an increase in staff this year of 5.3% on the back of a 16…
Yes, but there are 56 women in that service at the moment. They continue to be supported by the early transfer home midwifery team. As I said to Deputy Ward, any change of midwifery would give me cause for concern because you want to know you are going to have the same standard of care and the same experience and you do not want changes. I understand that. This is very much a temporary measure arising from those spec…
I thank the Deputy. I am indeed aware of the challenge not just in Kildare but around the country with public dental services. In particular, for school-aged children routine screening has been delayed, meaning some children do not receive an assessment until they have entered secondary school, which is simply unacceptable. While the HSE will follow up to ensure those children are seen, it is not good enough because …
I have no difficultly getting the Deputy that kind of data and I will clarify with him what exactly is the most helpful. In the longer term plan, I will certainly raise the question about the point at which the service is delivered. My current priority is ensuring the children whose dental examinations have been carried over and not delivered get those examinations. Some 51,000 sixth-class children's dental examinati…
The Deputy is right. We want children to get whatever they need as soon as they can. The HSE provides free orthodontic treatment at the point of care to those with the greatest level of need who have been assessed and referred before their 16th birthday. They have to have the appropriate assessments at the earliest stage. That is not to say nothing has happened. In 2025, over 155,000 assessments were carried out in t…