{"id":63902,"date":"2025-09-14T17:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T17:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/63902\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T17:29:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T17:29:07","slug":"minister-for-health-will-not-attend-hospital-consultants-annual-conference-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/63902\/","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":46788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,3496,18,13,14,6,7005,19,17,5002,26735,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-63902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-department-of-health","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-hospitals","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-jennifer-carroll-macneill","19":"tag-jim-ocallaghan","20":"tag-latest-news","21":"tag-latestnews","22":"tag-main-news","23":"tag-mainnews","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}