Results 401-420 of 8,239 for speaker:Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: The first thing I need is the analysis on a State basis of insourcing generally. I keep needing to separate insourcing and NTPF because they are linked but there is a measure of difference also. The issues of concern for me relate to both. The NTPF serves two purposes, as Deputy Sherlock knows. One is getting treatment abroad where it is appropriate and necessary. This may always be the...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I would like a more detailed answer from one of the officials because I feel I have already answered this in the way that I can.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: It is also important to take a global perspective and recognise there are many nurses coming to Ireland at the expense of their home countries. I am thinking of the Philippines in particular, which trains 13,000 nurses a year, 10,000 of whom leave to go to different parts of the world. At the World Health Assembly, I sat with the Filipino minister to recognise that. We are doing a lot of...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: Which has not been converted.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: Yes, and there is progress on this. There is €80 million for conversion but this is partially offset by a €60 million increase in pay where there is conversion. The conversion process began in July 2024 after the pause. A total of 512 staff have been onboarded as part of the agency conversion process. This is 53% of the target. Of the 512, 268 are nurses and midwives, 142...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: At present for 2025 we are on profile after a difficult start. January is always a difficult month. We are on profile at present but we will have to reflect on how we get on for the rest of the year. We did start lower and it is difficult to make these non-pay savings. It is a very focused effort, particularly in section 38 hospitals where there has not been the same delivery or focus on...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: For accuracy, I just want to clarify something I said in my statement. I said that there had been an average increase of 36% in real expenditure and 18% in the workforce in model 3 and model 4 hospitals. I hope members will forgive me because what I should have said was "at least 36% and 18%". The actual averages are 48% in real expenditure growth and 30% in workforce growth. I say that...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: An additional 34 staff were recruited in the HSE and they are dispersed across a range of relevant teams, including the negotiation and pre-clearance teams. There has been a 100% increase in the number of people working on this. What is important now is that they are working as efficiently as possible. It is a two-way stream, however, as the Deputy knows. It is also necessary for the...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I will have to reflect on the last question and revert to the Deputy. Ms Rachel Kenna will answer the question on the heel-prick test.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: Not only will I consider it but I will visit the unit. I will talk to the staff to understand the space and dynamic that service users view. They should not be there in the first place, for different reasons, but they need to be there. I will ask Mr. Tierney to come in on this point to speak about some of the capital programmes. I am also conscious that the hospital itself, and not just...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: No.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: There are number of different questions. I will ask the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, to come in on mental health and Mr. Tierney to come in on some of the infrastructure matters. In Kerry, there is a new ward block that is at design feasibility stage in accordance with the acute inpatient bed capacity expansion plan. In relation to community beds, there are 160 beds coming this year....

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I want to answer one thing in relation to trolleys because Kerry is particularly interesting. On Wednesday, 5 February, there were figures as high as 28 people on trolleys. Just by way of interest, in May, which was particularly interestedly managed, on 11 days out of 31 days in Kerry there were zero people on trolleys. There were three days with one person on a trolley. There were only...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I am due to meet CORU very shortly. I have been asking about this issue for different reasons. I ask Ms Kenna to comment.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I ask Mr. Tierney to come in on the Cork elective hospital and Ms Kenna on workforce planning. I will then have a perspective on dentistry.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: It is also very important that when dentists are being trained they come out and doing dentistry. I have a number of different ongoing concerns in relation to this issue.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: Yes, that is my ambition. This is subject to the agreement of the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, but I am hoping that will be the case. One of the reasons I talk about non-pay savings all of the time is to try to stay within budget and make that best case.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I agree. I met various representatives of the Simon Community last week on this and a number of other health and homelessness issues. The Minister of State, Deputy Murnane O'Connor, is well across this as well. I am aware of the issues with Usher's Island, as is the Minister of State. Regarding public procurement, we have been discussing a range of issues with the Department of public...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: We are advocating strongly for that. We are also advocating strongly for the review that the Department of housing is doing on what requires planning permission and what does not and what might be exempted. One thing we can see in the Department of Health, notwithstanding its very small capital budget and, as the Deputy pointed out, the very small increase in the capital budget relative to...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Revised) (25 Jun 2025)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I am very much looking forward to going to University Hospital Kerry. I do not believe that there has been a change in the number of presentations to the emergency department there. The Deputy is quite right to highlight the very great distress that people in Kerry have experienced with overcrowding in the emergency department of the hospital. This went on right through February and March....