Healthcare Policy Dail Éireann — 2026-03-05 ============================================================ Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire I take this opportunity to compliment Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore and its excellent manager, Louisea Burke, on delivering consistently predictable urgent and emergency care. While it is not easy, they do it with an extraordinary focus on patient care. Mr. Bernard Gloster, CEO of the HSE, visited the hospital recently to compliment them in that regard. Often we attend hospitals where there is a problem but not often enough do we attend hospitals to compliment them on their excellent work. Tullamore hospital is deserving of that attention. I met Tullamore hospital management reasonably recently, at the end of January at our regional forum, where I again took the opportunity to congratulate Louisea and all of the staff at Tullamore hospital for providing that extremely good, predictable and safe service to the people of the area. The hospital and the midlands need more elective capacity, however. Of course, because of the region it is in, it is within the south Dublin surgical hub, which is connected to St. James’s Hospital. That is a busy hub already and there is a need to reflect on the balance of that provided throughout the midlands. I acknowledge the Deputy’s advocacy on behalf of Tullamore. Indeed, I have visited it with him and seen the value of the space around Tullamore regional hospital. I know it well because of the Deputy. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-05/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:44+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-05