Two weeks ago, I asked the Taoiseach to stand up for Cork University Hospital, CUH, and end the unworkable and unsafe recruitment restrictions that are undermining patient care. The Taoiseach responded with barely controlled outrage. He said to me, "You have some nerve". I have reflected since on why the Taoiseach had that reaction. I do not doubt his personal and political attachment to CUH. As Minister for Health, he oversaw major investment there. I have my own connection with the hospital. The legendary cardiac surgeon Aonghus O'Donnell treated my father and extended his life by many years. My children were born in the maternity hospital. I worked in CUH as a psychologist.

Nobody questions the Taoiseach's attachment to CUH, but it is fair to question how in touch he is with what is happening there now because increasingly he looks detached, weak and defensive on this issue. He is unwilling to challenge a Minister for Health who discredits CUH at every opportunity and is using selective recruitment and trolley figures stripped of context about demand, complexity and long-standing staffing and bed shortages. Rather than challenging the Minister, the Taoiseach is providing her with political cover. It is relatively easy to scapegoat a hospital CEO who has sounded the alarm about what is happening at CUH, but it is much harder when nine clinical directors reinforce her account, writing to the Taoiseach about the Minister's misrepresentation of CUH, the damage to staff morale, recruitment and retention, and the need for an independent staffing assessment.

I have received an extremely disturbing account of what happened at CUH last Thursday and Friday. With emergency capacity overwhelmed, cancer operations were cancelled at short notice. Women admitted for mastectomies, some already in hospital gowns, were sent home. Colon, brain and prostate cancer operations were also cancelled. Imagine the distress of those patients. These are the consequences of the Minister's hardline attitude to CUH and her refusal to reckon with the reality of staffing shortages and overcrowding.

The Government's plan has identified CUH as having the country's largest adult inpatient and critical care bed deficit. The hospital's CEO and clinical directors have urgently sought 172 priority posts. According to the clinical directors' letter to the Taoiseach last week, only seven had been approved, yet the Minister berates CUH for underperforming while the Government restricts recruitment. The Taoiseach helped develop this hospital and now he is standing by while the Minister repeatedly undermines it. The Taoiseach told me that I had "some nerve" for asking him to stand up for CUH. It takes considerably more nerve to dismiss nine clinical directors while defending a Minister publicly attacking their hospital and ours.

Patient safety is at risk. Will the Taoiseach meet the CEO and clinical directors, commission an independent staffing assessment, and immediately approve the outstanding priority posts?

First of all, I want to acknowledge the tremendous work being done and that has been done by people working in Cork University Hospital over many years providing a strong and exceptional service to the people of the region. My objective and aim is to ensure that the hospital can work effectively and smoothly but we need to establish some fundamentals. The Deputy used the phrase "scapegoating the CEO" and I know the Deputy issued statements last week and yesterday in respect of a certain account of a meeting. I made a statement yesterday that this account was false and I would appreciate it if the Deputy accepted that statement. The HSE should clarify things and give the background to the entirety of that situation. My understanding is that the regional executive officer, REO, is very clear that at no stage did he make any reference to instructions from the Taoiseach's office or anybody from the Taoiseach's office. I want that to be clear because false assertions were made about my office. I want to absolutely clear about that.

Second, all is not well at CUH. That is very clear to me for different reasons but equally, as the Deputy said, he has been involved in the hospital, and I have been involved in supporting it for many years. Prior to the formation of the HSE, it was a Southern Health Board hospital. It has always been an integrated part of the public health acute hospital system in the Cork area. It still is now within the HSE. Whatever way these issues are going to get resolved, it has to be within that structure. It is a HSE hospital. It is not outside the HSE. It has got to work through the structures within the HSE. There cannot be alternative pathways and I will not be overriding the HSE. I will not be overriding the Minister in respect of this. I want to see a resolution of the issue, but trying to go directly over the head of the Minister either by meeting clinicians or whatever will not work. That is not the pathway to resolving these issues, nor is presenting inaccurate and untrue accounts of meetings people had locally. That is not a good way to do business either. I want to be very clear about that.

In terms of the safety issue, and I do believe that CUH, the Mercy, South Infirmary, Victoria, Mallow and Bantry all have to be looked at as an integrated public hospital service that complement each other and provide a service to the public and patients, there has been significant investment in CUH. I outlined it yesterday. It has gone from about €300 million to about €600 million between 2019 and 2025. The staffing has increased significantly.

Deputy Quaide to respond.

I do not think it is feasible that you would have an independent assessment-----

The Taoiseach will be back in.

-----of every single hospital. If you do it for one hospital, the next hospital will want it. That is not the way to do it either. I will come back to it.

The Taoiseach is not standing up for CUH. He is falling back on the same lines the Minister spins to deny the reality of what is happening there. The nine clinical directors who wrote to the Taoiseach have laid out that reality in stark terms: two CT scanners closed because of staffing shortages, patients waiting four weeks for essential access procedures for cancer treatment, 20 neuro-rehabilitation beds in Blarney unable to open because the Minister will not fund the staff, and now we are hearing of cancer operations cancelled and patients sent home at the last minute. This is a matter of life or death for some patients. We know that prolonged emergency department delays expose patients to serious harm and increased risk of death. The Taoiseach cannot keep defending the Minister while ignoring these warnings from senior clinicians. Will the Taoiseach intervene now, lift these recruitment restrictions and put patient safety ahead of defending the Minister?

Patient safety is paramount. What happened in respect of those cancer patients should not have happened, but the hospital needs to be managed as well.

It does not have the staff.

By that I mean, in terms of the scanners, for example-----

It does not have the staff.

Sorry, the staff has increased dramatically over the last number of years.

Did the Taoiseach read the letter that was sent to him?

Deputy, you were not to interrupt.

I did not interrupt the Deputy and I allowed him to ask the question. I respectfully ask him to allow me to answer. We went up 41% in staff between 2019 and 2025, from 3,456 to 4,870. That is what I am told and this year, we went from 4,870 to 5,194, and also-----

We need an independent assessment.

Deputy.

This is CUH. Also, CUH recruited more than any other hospital in 2026.

That is the background to it. HIQA is going into the hospital. The chief clinical officer, Colm Henry, has visited the hospital again recently in terms of patient safety.

That is not independent.

Patient safety is paramount in respect of any hospital and also in the context of CUH. It has to be.

I remind Deputies that each Member of the House, regardless of which side, has the opportunity and right to speak and be heard without interruption.