{"id":640807,"date":"2026-09-30T17:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/640807\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T17:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:58:08","slug":"minister-for-health-stands-over-cork-university-hospital-safety-and-staffing-levels-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/640807\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister for Health stands over Cork University Hospital safety and staffing levels \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill<\/a> has assured the public that Cork University Hospital (CUH<\/a>) meets all necessary safety standards following warnings from its chief executive of a risk to patients<\/a> from a shortfall in staffing levels.<\/p>\n

The Minister said more than 200 extra staff had been recruited so far this year, more than any other Model 4 hospital \u2013 the highest level of acute public hospital service \u2013 in the country, while CUH met all the required safety standards in terms of staffing across a number of metrics.<\/p>\n

\u201cCUH has hired now 233 people \u2013 that is more than any other Model 4 hospital in the country, and that includes Beaumont, the Mater, St James and UHL (University Hospital Limerick) and by some distance \u2013 it\u2019s hired 500 people over the last two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carroll MacNeill and Taoiseach Mich\u00e9al Martin<\/a> were at the opening of a new surgical hub at the hospital when she addressed the concerns raised by chief executive Jennifer Kearney last month about delays in filling vacancies.<\/p>\n

In a letter to the HSE<\/a>, first reported by RT\u00c9, Kearney said the hospital, which employs more than 5,000 staff, was down 1,053 employees. She warned that this would impact the levels of service and care this winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not believe that the current position is sustainable, nor do I believe it is safe to enter the winter period with the level of staffing uncertainty that currently exists,\u201d wrote Kearney in the letter to Priscilla Lynch, integrated healthcare area manager for HSE South West.<\/p>\n

Kearney explained that, due to \u201cincreasingly bureaucratic processes\u201d and \u201ca prolonged suppression of recruitment\u201d, some 348 whole-time equivalent (WTE) posts had not been filled despite funding having already been secured.<\/p>\n

Of the total 1,053 affected posts, she noted that a further 249 were approved but unfunded; 202 posts identified in National Service Plans had never been filled; 166 WTE were on maternity leave; and 88 staff were out on long term sickness leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a very real danger that we become focused on whether a post has passed through the correct approval gateway, rather than asking the more fundamental question: Is the hospital adequately staffed to provide safe care to patients?\u201d Kearney wrote.<\/p>\n

But Carroll MacNeill said she had confidence in both Kearney and in CUH\u2019s ability to deliver the treatment and care necessary as she catalogued the various checks carried out at the hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe immediately checked our National Patient Safety Office [once notified of Kearney\u2019s concerns]. There has been no increase in any of the markers that you might expect to see in a hospital that was operating unsafely,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe immediately checked with the National Mortality Register. There has been no uptick in incidents there that would be unexpected in any form. Hiqa<\/a> (the Health Information and Quality Authority) obviously have taken an interest in this.\u201d <\/p>\n

She added that the Safe Staffing Framework had been checked, a metric assessing the number of nursing staff relative to patient needs. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no issues there; it is fully implemented and then, of course, we had [HSE chief clinical officer] Colm Henry come and do a full safety analysis, and again, he has highlighted no incidents to us so by every metric that it is possible for us to have, Cork has been safe all year.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has assured the public that Cork University Hospital (CUH) meets all necessary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[46,27121,103,397,396,23813,2120,61,60,1421,1843],"class_list":["post-640807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-cork","tag-cork-university-hospital","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-hiqa","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jennifer-carroll-macneill","tag-micheal-martin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640807","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=640807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}