Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: ‘I worried whether I had the objectivity to be Minister for Health’

Eleven years after her son’s neonatal brain injury at birth, the Minister has met many women going through similar traumaMinister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill at the Department of Health HQ on Baggot Street, Dublin on Monday. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien / The Irish Times From her sixth-floor office in the Miesian Plaza on Baggot Street, Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill can see a framed portrait that her son James painted of her when he was five. It features a big, swooping red smile and a cartoonish face with the words “my mum” in a child’s scrawl at the top.If she shifts her gaze left, to the panoramic view of Dublin stretching from Croke Park to the Aviva Stadium, she can make out the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) below – where her son suffered an acquired brain injury after his birth more than a decade ago.“I can tell you, honestly, were you to have told me 11 years ago that I would get to a point where I’m sitting here, looking there; rather than there, looking here, there is no way I would have understood or believed that,” she says.“I would not have thought that that was possible, given the seriousness of what I was dealing with at the time. I don’t really like to talk about it too much, but I do think that the experience has probably made me a better public representative.”READ MORESince becoming Minister for Health last year, Carroll MacNeill has mostly avoided speaking publicly about her son’s case unless relevant to her role. Appearing before an Oireachtas committee on medical negligence claims last November, she declared a personal interest as someone whose child had gone through the State claims process following a case her family took against the NMH on Holles Street.I’ve spoken to parents who have had terrible things happen to them, or who are struggling. And, is it different because I understand it on a personal level? I think it is“I did worry about becoming the Minister for Health, when it was becoming clear to me that that might happen, about whether I would be able to bring sufficient objectivity to it, given my emotional experience. I wondered if I would have that objectivity, but I think I do,” she says.As she became Minister last January, a story broke about the care of babies at Portiuncula University Hospital in Co Galway – including seven born between 2024 and early 2025 who suffered neonatal brain injury.Her first act as Minister was visiting Galway to meet those mothers. “I sat with women who had had very negative experiences, and who had been through enormous emotional trauma within the previous year or two, which is a much more raw state of recovery, you know? My son is older ...”She admits this part of the job can be hard, given her personal experience.“I’ve seen a lot of good and bad in the neonatal and paediatric system. I would never, ever say that I was glad of that experience, because I wish it wasn’t so. But on the basis that I can’t change that ... I’ve spoken to parents who have had terrible things happen to them, or who are struggling. And, is it different because I understand it on a personal level? I think it is.”Based on her own experience in Temple Street, she and Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary are working to create a social welfare office in the new national children’s hospital. “I think it’s a natural thing for such a big and busy hospital to support parents when they need it,” she says.Last summer she made hexahydrocannabinol, a cannabinoid associated with psychosis, illegal. But parents say it’s still easy for children to buy vapes containing the drug on Irish high streets. “You pose a very, very good question about the enforcement of it,” she says. She says the Government now plans to ban substances such as cannabinoid vapes without needing primary legislation, to “keep pace with the innovations of people who want to get children addicted”.“Those are very, very serious drugs and children shouldn’t have access to them. End of.”She also revealed plans to make the shingles vaccine, which currently costs over €480, available through public funding for some cohorts. She wants to see “whether it’s possible to reach a commercial agreement to fund it in the initial stages, maybe for the over-80s and the immunocompromised”.What we need to make sure is that every woman has access to the best clinical care, that every woman is treated according to their needA year and a half in, Carroll MacNeill’s tenure has been defined by efforts to implement a new public-only contract. Prof Gabrielle Colleran, president of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA), said the lobby group’s last engagement with the Minister, in March 2025, was “not a constructive meeting”. Does she have a combative relationship with consultants? “No, I don’t really have a combative relationship with anybody,” she says.Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Times In a pointed reference to the IHCA, she says it is “challenging” to hear claims that it is not possible to get more consultants rostered for weekends. “Because it is actually happening in lots of different places. It’s just being done differently.”She also claims the IHCA is “a group who are associated with challenging the public-only nature of the surgical hubs”. Two consultants have taken separate judicial reviews against the HSE seeking the right to offer private care in the new hubs, but the IHCA had declined to say if it supported the case.The same contract will end private maternity care in Ireland in coming years. Carroll MacNeill says she “can totally understand” criticism from pregnant women who feel the system is changing at “a most important, if not the most important, time for you in your life and your child’s life”. But she cannot say if or when pregnant women will get continuity of care – the same doctor or midwife throughout pregnancy – under the public system. “What we need to make sure is that every woman has access to the best clinical care, that every woman is treated according to their need.”During a public row with the Rotunda Hospital this year, she criticised the hospital on radio for allowing public-only consultants to keep offering private care. A commentator on the same show later called it a “feisty interview”. Two weeks later, when she criticised the HSE for leaving beds empty in Cork while patients waited on trolleys, a front-page newspaper story described it as her “latest outburst”. Did any of that strike her as gendered language that wouldn’t have been used against her predecessor, Stephen Donnelly?“Or Jack Chambers, or Peter Burke?” Carroll MacNeill says. “Look, they’re not conversations I particularly enjoy, but it is something that I’ve noticed over time, and I think the people around me have noticed with greater sensitivity than possibly I have.”She became a junior minister at the Department of Finance four years ago after lobbying Leo Varadkar – the first woman Minister of State at the department in more than 25 years, and only the third woman to hold the role. Did she ask to be the new minister for finance when Paschal Donohoe resigned last year? “No, I didn’t. I was up to my knees in the Department of Health.”She remembers visiting the Department of Finance’s portrait gallery, lined with black-and-white pictures of a century’s male ministers. “It’s quite something,” Carroll MacNeill says. “There’s just so many men around the walls, and I’m sure they’re all very capable, but you can’t help but wonder: was there no woman capable of performing the role in all of that time?” She thinks it’s “unnatural” that there haven’t been women leading the departments of Taoiseach, Finance and Public Expenditure.Simon Harris is expected to become taoiseach again next year, with a Fianna Fáil minister for finance likely to replace him and a vacancy opening for a Fine Gael minister for public expenditure. “Of course I’d like to be considered. You can’t say these things and then not follow through,” Carroll MacNeill says. “But it is a decision for the leader of Fine Gael, and these are not easy decisions either.”IN THIS SECTION