Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

Not on First Stage.

While the Deputy's question is quite broad, I know that it is really about access to healthcare which is what we all want. It is a priority for everyone in this Dáil, for me and for this Government. In December, the HSE published its national service plan for 2026, which sets out the services that the HSE will provide with its funding allocation. This builds on progress we have already made this …

I am very glad to have this timely opportunity to have this discussion with the Deputy. The reason is officials from her region and the three Dublin regions will be in with me on Monday for a whole day to go through some of these issues exactly because we are trying to manage healthcare as a region. There are patients in Cavan who will need to be treated in Beaumont, a specialist centre for neurol…

There might be two slightly different issues there. The HSE app is a patient-focused app in the first instance. People can make appointments and see prescriptions. Its functionality is improving over time to be able to book appointments. It is slightly different from the broader shared care record and electronic health record. The shared care record which we are rolling out this year is the techno…

There has been quite a degree of confusion on this and so it is very useful to set out the circumstances of it. As part of the community pharmacy agreement in 2025, all the parties agreed to introduce improved controls for phased dispensing. That would ensure that patients on high-risk medications such as antipsychotics or opioids are appropriately targeted with support for phased dispensing rathe…

I really have to address the language here first of all. There is no policy to reverse because nothing has changed. The basic facts are that nothing has changed and therefore nothing can be reversed. While the Deputy and I believe that and I totally understand the reasons for that, the science does not support that. The more important thing from the State's perspective is the degree to which this …

I am particularly intrigued to see left-wing parties coming in here and asking me to give money to pharmacists to make good what had been done illegitimately. I would like to use the State's money directly for the benefit of vulnerable people but not to reward those pharmacists to keep things even for them for something that they were doing wrong in the first place.

There are many older people, including people who have contacted the Deputy - I see it on her social media pages the same as everyone else - who have told her that they have been paying for blister packs for years and they have always done so.

This is not a back-and-forth and I am trying to set out the facts on it. I would love to see left-wing parties come in here and defend the interests of the State and defend the interests of the taxpayer. Sometimes I think these roles are reversed. Perhaps for Fine Gael, I should come in and articulate the speaking points of the pharmacy union, but I am trying to articulate the position of the Stat…

I will first concentrate on the wider challenges regarding oral healthcare. There is a significant challenge that continues to affect the delivery of school-based dental programmes. In the period to November 2025, over 138,000 new patients were assessed, including 90,000 under targeted programmes in respect of school and special care programmes, but in many cases screening is delayed, meaning some…

I am in complete agreement that this simply has to improve. While the services are there, looking at the wider workforce generally in relation to dental care, if we separate it out from orthodontics, how we use the workforce has come up a number of times. We train dentists at quite a considerable cost to the State. We do that because we want dentists to be available to do dental work, both in priv…

We have made some good progress on the training. The RCSI has opened a new community train-and-treat facility in Sandyford and has just started building one in Connolly Hospital as well. We are making some good progress there. On screening, the seven-year-old child mentioned by Deputy Bennett needed much earlier screening, which could have been provided by a dental hygienist. The actual dental wor…

As the Deputy will be aware, the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration has responsibility for coroners’ legislation and policy and is actively engaging with all relevant stakeholders, including my Department and the HSE. Since 2 January 2026, coronial post mortems have been provided by locum consultants recruited by the Department of justice, and the facilities and auxiliary staff of U…

It is important to separate out the arrangements we are talking about. This arrangement is not for all post mortems; it is for coronial-directed post mortems in instances, as the Deputy correctly identifies, of sudden or unexpected death that require and are directed to have this type of post mortem carried out. That is very much an issue for the Department of justice. Clearly, pathologists are co…

Again, I will direct that to my colleague, the Minister for justice, because coronial post mortems are a different thing. There is a difficulty recruiting pathologists across the country. For example, our friends in Belfast are having real difficulty on the paediatric and perinatal pathology side, which is very distressing for families with the loss of a child or a baby. There is a shortage genera…

Cancer services in Ireland are organised on the basis of a centralised model of care rather than a per-county basis. That enables the specialists to support the specialist centres. There are eight designated adult centres, 26 systemic anti-cancer therapy centres and three public radiation oncology centres. While performance data is collected at each centre, it is not based on where the person live…

The timeline is the one we have all set in relation to the Sláintecare targets. We are all working towards that. As we discussed earlier, I would appreciate those specific examples so I can follow them up much better.

Across 2025, in Beaumont Hospital, where many patients would be referred, 80% of urgent breast cancer referrals were seen within ten working days and 98% of the non-urgent referrals were seen within 12 weeks. It sounds so impersonal to talk about the metrics, but you have to look at how everybody is experiencing it and not an individual to see how we are doing over time. In December 2025, Beaumont…

I might separate that into two things. I do not know what I was doing ten years ago, or what the Deputy was doing ten years ago. I do not know what that has to do with anything. I do not know who wrote that for the Deputy as a political point.

If we could get to the reality of the delivery of cancer services, this Oireachtas agreed Sláintecare. I am here at the moment - there will be somebody after me, as there was somebody before me - to try to implement that and make sure we have a public system that meets people's needs as close to home as possible and in a timely way. We are making good progress with that. If the Deputy looks at our…

I thank the Deputy for allowing me to update the House on this matter. Primary care centres form an important part of our health infrastructure and provide a single point of access to primary and community care services for individuals. As the Deputy is more than aware, the need for a new primary care centre in Gorey was identified as part of the overall primary care centre development programme. …

The Deputy is well aware of the circumstances in which the previous process lapsed. We will continue to make sure it progresses at the appropriate pace. I will speak to the HSE about it. We will all be very pleased when we see a tender awarded and progress beginning on the site.

I appreciate the absolute commitment to this issue by Deputy Byrne and the other Deputies from the area on behalf of the people of the region. I think we will end up with a good-sized primary care centre but we want to see progress on that and facilities expedited as much as possible. I certainly will continue to work with the Deputy and with the HSE to try to maintain the appropriate schedule to …

I appreciate the Deputy's question. My Department is committed to ensuring there is safe and equitable access to termination of pregnancy services. We have taken a number of important actions to give effect to that, on which I will update the House. In line with the programme for Government, all 19 maternity hospitals are now providing termination of pregnancy services. There has also been a cont…

I really do hear the Deputy. I respect that there are so many different views on this issue. I am broadly pro-choice and voted that way but I am not unreservedly pro-choice. Certainly, there are many elements of Deputy Murphy's Bill I simply do not agree with and cannot find a way to agree with. As Minister, I have tried to facilitate the broadest debate. I really do respect the very different opi…