{"id":394347,"date":"2026-04-12T06:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T06:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394347\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T06:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T06:36:08","slug":"health-service-pressures-due-to-older-population-a-daily-issue-rather-than-future-problem-minister-says-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394347\/","title":{"rendered":"Health service pressures due to older population a daily issue rather than future problem, Minister says \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rising demand on the health service<\/a> due to Ireland\u2019s ageing population is not a problem for the future, but one that is impacting hospitals daily, the Minister for Health has said. <\/p>\n

In an address to the Irish Medical Organisation<\/a> (IMO) conference in Killarney, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill<\/a> said about 7,500 more over-75s had attended an emergency department in the first three months of this year than in the same period last year. <\/p>\n

She described the scale of the increase as \u201cquite extraordinary\u201d and cited it as evidence of the constantly growing demand for health services. She said more staff would be needed in the HSE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the incoming IMO president, Prof Matthew Sadlier, suggested that 5,000 additional hospital beds would be required<\/a> to deal with the population growth and demographic change. <\/p>\n

The Minister played down the prospect of any substantial new investment in hospitals until existing agreements on weekend working were implemented.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to build another hospital in Ireland when I know it would only work five days a week,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t make any sense to me. It doesn\u2019t make any sense to anybody walking around the streets. We need to build more infrastructure, but for it to work for six and seven days.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 69 per cent of consultant doctors are on the new \u201cpublic only\u201d contracts, which require them to work weekday evenings and Saturdays, she said. Changes to rostering across many other disciplines required for hospitals to operate on a six-day basis had been \u201cbought and paid for since 2008\u201d, Carroll MacNeill said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now have a completely unique moment where we have the buy-in of the contract signed by the consultant side and the buy-in of unions. Were we not to implement those tools that the State has bought and paid for, taxpayers bought and paid for, it would be unforgivable.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has big ambitions \u2013 but can she succeed in health?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Carroll MacNeill said she wants to see six-day working widely implemented quickly and made it clear she regards it as a stepping stone to seven-day working. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you get to seven days, you never go back,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

The mood in the room suggested many of the doctors present may not be quite as enthusiastic about the notion as the Minister. However, the end of her speech was met with polite applause.<\/p>\n

HSE chief executive Anne O\u2019Connor<\/a> made her first public remarks since her recent return from the VHI<\/a> to succeed Bernard Gloster<\/a> in the role.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been massive investment in the health system,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been gone nearly four years and it\u2019s grown significantly in that time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t about everybody working harder, doing things the way we\u2019ve always done it, but just doing more of it. We have to work differently and the reforms that are under way will allow us to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rising demand on the health service due to Ireland\u2019s ageing population is not a problem for the future,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[174651,13501,2120,61,60,97947,1421,43,92007],"class_list":{"0":"post-394347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-anne-oconnor","9":"tag-bernard-gloster","10":"tag-hse","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-irish-medical-organisation","14":"tag-jennifer-carroll-macneill","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-vhi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394347","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=394347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}