{"id":21136,"date":"2025-09-14T17:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T17:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/21136\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T17:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T17:23:07","slug":"minister-for-health-will-not-attend-hospital-consultants-annual-conference-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/21136\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister for Health will not attend hospital consultants\u2019 annual conference \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill<\/a> will not attend next month\u2019s hospital consultants conference. <\/p>\n

Sources close to the Minister for Health said she would be unable to speak at the Irish Hospital Consultants Association <\/a>(IHCA) gathering as she had other commitments in her official diary. <\/p>\n

It is unusual for a minister for health not to attend the annual conferences of the main medical organisations.<\/p>\n

Ms Carroll MacNeill also did not attend the Irish Medical Organisation<\/a> (IMO) conference in April due to prior commitments.<\/p>\n

A senior IHCA delegation held talks with the Minister earlier this year, a meeting which a number of sources have described as \u201ctense\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a statement this weekend the IHCA described that meeting in March as \u201cconstructive and robust\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is understood that at that meeting the IHCA raised the implementation of the recommendations of a Department of Health expert group on reforms relating to medical negligence claims<\/a> which was chaired by former Master of the National Maternity Hospital Prof Rhona Mahony.<\/p>\n

Since the Minister\u2019s appointment in January, she has pressed for the full implementation of provisions in the new public-only hospital consultant contract<\/a> to improve productivity in hospitals, particularly at weekends.<\/p>\n

Health sources said that at the meeting in March with the IHCA there had been robust discussion and an exchange of views about the implementation of the public-only contract and having senior clinical decision-makers in hospitals at weekends and night-time.<\/p>\n

Health sources said the meeting had ended amicably.<\/p>\n

The IHCA said this weekend it was \u201cunfortunate\u201d the Minister for Health could not attend its October conference, but it said the invitation remained open.<\/p>\n

Sources close to the Minister said the IHCA had initially suggested it was also considering asking Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan<\/a> to attend as one of the main issues to be debated at the conference was medico-legal reform.<\/p>\n

Health sources insisted that by the time Ms Carroll MacNeill was invited, she already had a commitment for the date of the IHCA conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill will not attend next month\u2019s hospital consultants conference. Sources close to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3414,3267,61,60,1421,18573,43],"class_list":["post-21136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-department-of-health","tag-hospitals","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jennifer-carroll-macneill","tag-jim-ocallaghan","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}