Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said CUH was significantly over its budget

CUH must improve managing budget, health minister says

· RTE.ie

Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has said Cork University Hospital (CUH) must improve in managing its budget and deploying its resources.

She was speaking after the CEO of CUH Jennifer Kearney last week wrote to the HSE expressing an "increasing concern" regarding patient safety risks.

Ms Kearney said she did not believe it was "safe to enter the winter period with the level of staffing uncertainty that currently exists".

However, speaking this morning, Minister Carroll MacNeill said over the last five to six years, staffing at CUH has increased by 40%, while its budget has risen 108%.

She said this year, CUH was significantly over their budget.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Minister Carroll MacNeill said: "We cannot continue to increase health budgets by 10% and 15% and 20%, that's totally unrealistic.

"They have to manage within their budgets and other regions and other hospitals are.

"I do have to say that the southwest region generally has hired more people in this year than any other region.

"In fact, they (CUH) are over their budget, significantly over their budget.

"But Limerick is within its budget and has hired and maintained its budget, which is a finite budget each year.

"Cork has had a very significant increase in staffing over the last five to six years of over 40%.

"I am sorry to say that the increased activity is only 16% and there is more to do in Cork to get the best value and the best deployment of all of the resources that it has been given.

"There was an increased budget available, an increased budget, not a stay still budget, an increased budget.

"So you have to make choices, if they got an increased budget so that they could hire more staff, then have to choose where are we going to put those staff."

"We have to get better value, we have to get more from that, and we have to get the intelligent and strategic deployment of all of those people right across the region, right across the country for the benefit of patients," she added.