{"id":612066,"date":"2026-09-02T08:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T08:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/612066\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T08:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T08:36:09","slug":"healthcare-management-spend-in-cork-and-kerry-wildly-over-the-pay-budget-minister-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/612066\/","title":{"rendered":"Healthcare management spend in Cork and Kerry ‘wildly over the pay budget’, minister says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The health minister has doubled down on her criticism of healthcare management in Cork and Kerry, saying the region is \u201cwildly over the pay budget\u201d and demanded leaders manage their funding better.<\/p>\n

It follows a developing row between\u00a0Cork University Hospital<\/a> and HSE South West over funding.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has argued that regional budgets cover hospital and community care, including sites supporting CUH and that more use be made of Mallow hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important that integrated care is understood by everybody in the system,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Carroll MacNeill reiterated safety alerts have not increased, but said the South West has \u201crecruited 760 people for the first seven months of this year\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is, in many cases, twice what other regions have hired in the same period,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe regions this year were given the opportunity to manage their budget, and some have been able to do that better than others. Some have been more strategic than others.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

She said it is not acceptable to \u201chire twice as many people\u201d or be \u201cwildly over the pay budget\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is for every person in leadership to make sure they\u2019re using all of the resources that the taxpayer has given them for the best interest of all of those patients,\u201d the minister said.<\/p>\n

Workforce intelligence report<\/p>\n

She was speaking to media after the launch of the Irish Medical Council\u2019s workforce intelligence report for 2025.<\/p>\n

More than a quarter of doctors struggled to give patients the right care at least once a week or more last year. This is higher than during 2024.<\/p>\n

Some 8.7% had difficulties at least once a day with only 30.7% saying they never have problems providing the right level of care.<\/p>\n

Barriers included high workloads, spending too much time on administration, overcrowding, and delays to accessing screening.<\/p>\n

Doctors also reported not being able to access equipment.<\/p>\n

The report shows 56.6% of doctors trained in Ireland while 14% trained in the EU or UK and 29.5% trained elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Pakistan and Sudan are the countries where non-EU doctors most commonly come from. Numbers of female doctors rose slightly to 47.6% of active doctors from 47% in 2023.<\/p>\n

Professor Deirdre J Murphy, president of the Medical Council, warned: \u201cToo many doctors are telling us that workload, administration, and overcrowding are getting in the way of the care they want to provide.\u201d<\/p>\n

She welcomed the diversity of the workforce, saying this better reflects \u201cchanging demographics of patients and communities across the country\u201d.<\/p>\n

Irish Hospital Consultants Association president Professor Gabrielle Colleran was not surprised by the findings around barriers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the lived experience of so many of my specialist colleagues,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile \u2018pressure on workloads\u2019 was the single most frequently quoted barrier, the fact that \u2018time spent on bureaucracy\/administration\u2019 was a close second highlights yet again the need to accelerate the rollout of electronic health records across the health system as a matter of urgency.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The health minister has doubled down on her criticism of healthcare management in Cork and Kerry, saying the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[15607,59626,79,103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":["post-612066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-cork-health","tag-cork-hospitals","tag-cork-news","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612066","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=612066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}