The Department of Health’s budget will increase to over €27 billion next year as a result of funding set out in Budget 2026 - but will this be enough to remedy staffing shortfalls, long waitlists and patients waiting on trolleys? 

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, Minister for Health, joined The Pat Kenny Show to speak about where the breakdown of this money will go in the health sector. 

“In many ways we can throw so much money at the health system but it's about the way in which it’s organised. 

“I can throw all of the money, we can recruit all of the people but unless the system is working in a way that’s more productive, gives better value to the taxpayer and better security for the patient, then it's a circular conversation.

Health budget

 Ms Carroll MacNeill says she is aware of the downfalls in the system. 

“We have a relentless focus on trying to increase hospital beds and the staff to go with them.

“Hospitals are a bit like, to be a bit crude about it - like an airport, people arrive, they move through and they must leave or else there’s a clog along the way in the emergency department - and that is not safe."

Ms Carroll MacNeill described the measures that her department is trying to implement across the country. 

“A quarter of the state’s spending goes on health.

“We’ve now introduced two virtual wards, if you’re in Limerick or you’re in St Vincent's, you can be an admitted patient of the hospital, but be at home.

“You’re wearing wearable technology that’s monitoring all your vital signs, you’re getting check ins all of the time from virtual hospitals.

“People can be at home rather than acute hospital beds, where the risk of infection is different."

Ms Carroll MacNeill was asked about her predecessors in the role of health minister, such as Stephen Donnelly of Fianna Fáil. She refuses the point that she is cleaning up their mess: 

“Everyone brings their own lens to it. I am the beneficiary of the work of Stephen Donnelly on the productivity dashboard, to compare consultants and hospitals”

“There’s no room for ego in health, this is about serving the people and serving the community” , she believes. 

'You're not God'

On the point of ego, she was questioned on her style of authority as her encounter with David Begg, former chair of the Mater Hospital was cited. In this encounter, Mr Begg reportedly said to her “You’re only the Minister for Health, you’re not God,” in which she subsequently stormed out of the meeting.  

“I don’t know how to answer that. I’m just doing my job, using all the data and the skills that I have to get a better service for patients” Ms Carroll MacNeill said. 

The Minister was then questioned about the long-awaited new Children’s Hospital, as she defends the costs that have been put towards it as a necessary and important investment. 

“The Children’s Hospital has had a long background, but if you look at the cost of it in relative terms, you’re looking at around  2.3 billion euros overall.

“That is less than the amount of money that I will spend this year on drugs for people, our drugs budget is well over 3 billion. The children’s hospital is less than a tenth of my annual current spend on health”. 

'The answer is no - straight no'

The presidential election was then brought up to the Minister, as her party’s candidate Heather Humphreys is in a two horse race.

On The Hard Shoulder, Kieran Cuddihy asked presidential candidate Catherine Connolly whether she would hire a convicted rapist to work in Áras an Uachtaráin, given her history of hiring a woman convicted of gun crime to work in Leinster House.

Connolly was very hesitant to answer this and concluded: “I’d have to reflect on it, as a woman."

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill was asked for her reaction. 

“Can I just be clear that I wouldn’t have to reflect on it if I were in the highest office in the highest seat of the land? I don’t think Heather Humphreys would ever have to reflect on it. 

"The answer is no, straight no. Yes, we have prisons of rehabilitation but we’re talking about bringing people into Áras an Uachtárain, there shouldn't be any ambiguity."

"It’s a mystery to me that anybody running for president or a Dáil office would be in the space where there’s ambiguity about serious criminal activity either on terrorism or on sexual violence”, she says.