I thank Deputy Doherty. It is an absolute priority for everybody in this House that we do not have people waiting on hospital trolleys. It is a key marker of patient safety, but it is also a key marker of dignity and how we treat our people. It has been an imperative for me the entire time that I have been Minister for Health. When I started, we had 617 people on hospital trolleys. This morning there are 340. Our saf…
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 ask the Deputy-----
Well, let us take the facts seriously. The reality is that demand has increased in every area and every hospital. I look at it on a whole of hospital basis every single day. I look at it every single day so you tell me why Beaumont is different to Cork. Both of them have recruited. Both of them have the same demand pressures. Both have needs for the future into 2027, which is what this budget has delivered but Beaumo…
That is 36 too many but the facts are here every single day. The reality is that there are some hospitals that have not improved that need to improve. Bizarrely, the ones that consistently do not improve, i.e. Cork, have had the highest recruitment. If there was a correlation between recruitment and performance I would agree with the Deputy but there is not.
I thank the Deputy for raising this really important issue. Let me answer them in a slightly different order. On medical gaslighting and how women are treated, let me completely acknowledge what the Deputy is saying. Let me completely acknowledge women have been treated differently in the medical system and that research that was done on men is applied to women in circumstances where that is not necessarily true. Let…
That is one of the reasons we made a presumptive diagnosis in the framework for endometriosis, so that the woman did not have to prove it and would be believed and listened to. Women are the best narrators of their own experience.
The cultural shift is really important. We have employed MISE, phenomenal advocates for endometriosis, to go into schools, workplaces and maybe the Oireachtas to talk about endometriosis a…
In the first instance, it is completely predictable that nurses will graduate every year. That is what we want. The State invests in training our nurses and we want them to stay in Ireland. More nurses are staying in Ireland than we have ever seen before, according to the NMBI, not me, and we want them to stay. Some 83% of graduate nurses this year have been offered positions, which is what should happen. It is incum…
It is so important to prioritise community care, which is why the challenge in here is articulated in terms of acute hospitals and not always in terms of community care. Let us look at that because the acutes have always pulled from community, as the Deputy is aware, but the resources need to go into community. That is why we are trying to focus on making sure there are beds going into model 2 hospitals like Mallow a…
I want to be very clear that this is not a Government campaign and that is not the view of Government. It is not the view of the Minister for justice, who made his view very clear this morning. The Government does not support that advertisement or that campaign.
There is a broader question around consent, which is important, and that is highlighted and targeted. As the Deputy said, it is important that we are having…
I thank the Deputy. I reiterate that this is not a Government campaign. There was no question of it being sanctioned by the Government. The Government has service level agreements with many different entities to deliver services on their behalf and this ad was funded without consultation with anyone in government. I want to be absolutely clear that no person in government viewed or sanctioned this ad.
This is not representative of the views of the Government.
It is not representative of the views of the Government. We have service level agreements with a range of different entities across the health, justice and housing systems that deliver services on behalf of the Government. That does not mean we have oversight of every single thing they do. I am saying clearly that the ad has been withdrawn and does not represent the views of the Government. That is crucial.
I thank the Deputy. The "do not consume" notice was lifted for customers on the Ardfinnan regional water supply scheme on Monday, 19 October, following consultation with the HSE. The lifting of that notice followed the completion of critical works at Goatenbridge water treatment plant, an extensive and targeted flushing programme across the network, and comprehensive water quality sampling at both the plant and acros…
I thank the Deputy. Knowledge of the difficulty is important. I highlight the role of local radio, in particular Tipp FM, which provides an important service to constituents, including being able to highlight issues of this significance.
Of course, the boil water notice continues until the issue has been addressed but, pardon the pun, it still has to flush through the system to ensure it is all clear. Ongoing testin…
I thank the Deputy. As he is aware, the fuel allowance is paid to 26% of households across the country and that increase of €5 will take place next year. We have also tried to take the measures we can at a cost of close to €1.4 billion, which is nearly the total uplift of the Department of Health this year, to try to suppress energy prices in different ways. Carbon tax on home heating oil and gas has been reduced and…
The Government is committed to taking the steps that it can to increase road safety. The number of road deaths is not acceptable. We are going into a bank holiday weekend and darker weather. It is incumbent on everybody to make sure that they are slowing down and taking appropriate steps to maintain their own road safety and that of everybody around them. The Garda continues to enforce traffic laws and engage in brea…
I thank the Deputy. Naas is an important model 3 hospital. It has had a bigger staff uplift than most other hospitals; it has had a 40% uplift in staff since 2020. That is even in circumstances where it has a very high proportion of agency staff. Naas is one of the hospitals where we should be targeting the new graduate recruitment in particular to make sure that it is not dependent on agency and that it has permanen…
I thank the Deputy for highlighting this and for his own work on HPV and the HPV vaccine, which he raises consistently. In many ways, it speaks to the intersection of this – the importance of preventing cancer where possible and the importance of good-quality information and of trusting that information. This is a state that is based on science and respecting science. We have seen other states move away from that ver…
The Minister of State, Deputy Murnane O’Connor, brought legislation through the House to ban smells, flavours, colours and anything else that made nicotine addiction products more attractive to children. That has passed and gone to the President to be signed. That is an important part of this.
We are already in a conversation with local authorities in respect of the proliferation of vape shops, which are bad for pub…
This year is evidence that we have prioritised drugs for rare diseases and the speed with which they are approved. What we cannot control is the conduct or participation of the drugs companies. The Deputy will be aware, particularly in relation to Skyclarys, that we were waiting for an extremely long time for the drugs company to submit the different pieces of documentation, including its commercial proposal. I am ve…
I thank the Deputy for his repeated advocacy on behalf of University Hospital Galway and the master plan to develop this over some period. I also thank him for facilitating a meeting recently between myself and Cancer Care West to be able to discuss some of the detail of that.
With regard to critical infrastructure designations, there is more work to be done by the project team and hospital, but it is exactly the ki…
We are trying to place a continuing focus on childcare because I, like many others in the House representing their constituents, know well the cost of childcare.
The core funding scheme is the mechanism in place at the moment. It is an effort to try to bring as many crèches and childcare facilities into a State-based scheme as possible. However, I recognise that there are people outside it. There was an effort to tr…
I thank the Deputy. He will be aware that 36 hospitals have a charge for parking, with a maximum daily rate, and another nine do not have a charge. Parking is entirely free at Bantry, Mallow, Ennis and even in St. Luke's Hospital in Rathgar. There are four hospitals where the fixed daily rate is above €10: St. Vincent's University Hospital; St James's Hospital; the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital; and St. Joh…
I am conscious that the region the Deputy represents has been the beneficiary of exactly that type of care outside Cork University Hospital, CUH, in Mallow in community nursing units, yet there is a continual articulation about putting money into CUH and vacancies there when, as the Deputy correctly said, the emphasis must be on the community.
In this year's budget, we have increased yet again the budget for older p…
Indeed. It has the highest recruitment and yet has never improved its position, depending on how it has been managed.