Health Services Staff

Tuesday, 16 June 2026

Questions (922)

Pádraig O'Sullivan

Question:

922. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Health whether the Patient Safety (Licensing) Bill 2025 will provide HIQA with powers to assess staffing governance, staffing levels or staffing risks in public and private healthcare settings; whether HIQA will be able to take enforcement action where staffing is deemed unsafe or inadequate; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [45280/26]

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Written answers

Minister for Health

Licensing legislation is being developed to facilitate the creation of a comprehensive system of regulation to oversee all hospitals in the State, both public and private. It will also provide the Minister for Health with the authority to designate certain activities that take place outside of a hospital setting as carrying a sufficiently high risk to warrant their providers to also come within the scope of the new regime.

There is a lacuna at present, whereby there is no specific legislation in place in relation to the sanctioning of hospitals if they do not operate to minimum standards of clinical governance. The proposed Patient Safety (Licensing) Bill seeks to rectify this situation. This will be done by giving HIQA the power of sanction when conditions of a license are not met, up to or including the cancellation of a license which may result in closure as under the Licensing Bill, it will be an offence to operate a hospital without a license.

Standards will be underpinned by Ministerial regulations in secondary legislation in order to ensure that HIQA has powers of enforcement.

This legislation provides an important opportunity to support staffing standards and governance, examining the options available to support local decision-making, flexibility and the ability to redesign and innovate across multi-disciplinary and multi-agency settings. The Department is working with the Office of Parliamentary Council and will ensure that legislative and regulatory options to strengthen safer staffing across the health and social care service are fully explored in the context of this Bill.