Hospital Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-01
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Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

Sure. What I would point out is that the south west has a more than ample number of ample staff at the moment. It has recruited 617 people this year alone, which is a nearly quarter of all the people who have been hired by the HSE this year. The HSE has recruited 2,700 people overall. As stated, 617 of them have been appointed in the south west, which is one of six regions. Those in the south west have dramatically increased their recruitment. They are still very high when it comes to agency staff and overtime, which means that there has been no lack of people available to work in the south west.
As already stated, third-party insourcing ceased yesterday. I am not suggesting that this is directly related, because I do not have that information. However, some of that third-party insourcing in CUH related directly to diagnostics. The letter to which the Deputy referred relates to a diagnostic concern. That must be sorted out because the people who must not be prejudiced by what is happening in this regard are children who are awaiting diagnostic scans.
The issue around the letter and the timing of everything certainly raises more questions for me to interrogate and investigate. As I said, the south west has recruited many more people than other regions. Dublin Mid-Leinster has recruited about 300 people, so the south west is well advanced in terms of its recruitment and the availability of people to do this work. We must figure out exactly what has happened and how that may be managed, but this does raise quite a number of new questions for me to investigate.
The Deputy asked about developments relating to paediatric care at the hospital. The Government has invested significantly in paediatric care in CUH. Phase 1 of the paediatric department has been operational since 2017. Phase 2 will focus on the paediatric inpatient unit and will deliver 82 much-needed new and replacement inpatient paediatric beds. We continue to invest in and support that. It is very important that we get to the bottom of the situation relating to MRI scans.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-01