HSE executive instructed by Taoiseach and Minister’s offices to have ‘specific conversations’ with CUH boss

The offices of the Taoiseach and Minister for Health instructed a senior HSE executive to “have some very specific conversations” with the Cork hospital chief who raised concerns about patient safety risks arising from staffing restrictions, documents show. Minutes of the meeting of Cork University Hospital’s (CUH) executive management board, held on August 20th, indicate a heated exchange between the overall head of the HSE in the south and southwest, Andy Philips, and the chief executive of the hospital Jennifer Kearney. It took place days after Kearney wrote a letter to her superiors raising what she described as ongoing staff vacancies at CUH and associated patient risks. The letter had been leaked to the media the previous day.The minutes indicate that Kearney was warned she could face a performance management process – a formal structure in which an employee’s work is appraised – in the organisation.READ MOREAccording to the minutes, Philips said: “If I have to go to performance management I will.”Kearney asked if Philips was “threatening her with performance management”, to which he replied that “these are performance management issues”.The minutes quote Philips as saying: “There are things that are not acceptable to Government and some things that are not acceptable to me.”HSE regional management argued that elements of Kearney’s letter on staffing and safety issues had been “incorrect”, the documents show. “If you start saying things in the media which are incorrect, there will be a very pointed conversation to be had,” Philips is quoted as stating.Spokeswomen for both Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill denied on Friday that they had spoken to the regional executive officer of HSE South West during August.In her letter dated August 17th to a superior manager in HSE South West, Kearney said delays in approving posts and restrictions on recruitment had left CUH facing a shortage of more than 1,000 staff. She maintained the hospital was facing increasing patient safety risks as a result.Speaking at the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association annual conference earlier this month, Kearney said she “absolutely stands by” the comments she made in the letter, adding that “it is getting worse”.The minutes record Philips as telling Kearney that he had “been instructed by the Taoiseach’s office and the Minister for Health’s office to have some very specific conversations with you”.HSE South West did not respond to a series of questions regarding any conversations Philips may have had with either the office of the Taoiseach or the Minister for Health. In a statement it said it acknowledged the operational and financial challenges facing CUH and the work of clinicians and managers to address them.“In light of these challenges and in order to give assurances on patient safety, a programme of additional support for CUH will be implemented to assist the hospital, involving the entire HSE South West regional executive management team and additional national supports,” it said. “Patient safety remains our highest concern, and we are working with the HSE CEO and the Department of Health to fill critical vacancies.”A spokeswoman for Martin said: “The Taoiseach did not meet, speak to or give any instructions to the HSE regional executive officer in HSE South West during August.”A spokeswoman for the Minister for Health said she did not have a conversation with the regional executive officer of HSE South West on the matters concerned “so cannot speak to what he did or did not say in the room on that occasion”. Speaking at an event on Friday, Carroll MacNeill said after concerns were raised publicly, the national patient safety office and the HSE’s chief clinical officer attended the hospital and found the patient safety profile of CUH “throughout 2026 was stable and that it remained that way”.“We don’t have any marker by which we’re identifying any different patient safety risk than the ones that applies every day in healthcare,” she said, adding that all of the metrics suggest CUH was “operating in the same way” as any other hospital.