Health Service Executive

after she flagged staffing shortages.

Her boss is the head of HSE South West, Andy Phillips, and he warned her she faced formal performance management after speaking out.

Social Democrats TD for Cork East, Liam Quaide.

I think she's one of the bravest people I've ever heard put to run that hospital, Liam.

That's right.

That's the implication in the Irish Times report this morning.

And I think this really kind of harks back to the worst aspects of HSE culture, where somebody who identifies an issue, you know, based on their own ethics, based on their commitment to patient care, becomes the problem.

And it's relatively easy to scapegoat one CEO or one person.

So I just would stress that.

But there is a HSE investigation here.

There was an investigation by the Irish Prison Service and the Inspector of Prisons which investigates all deaths in custody.

Gardaí were also initially involved so the prison van was seized, CCTV was looked at but the guards have told me that they are sending a file to the coroner and I understand that Mr Costigan's death is deemed to have been by natural causes.

Maybe, you know, someone will explain the circumstances in which that decision was made in time.

But I'm frustrated, to be honest with you, Mick, because I sought those answers and I knew what kind of response I was going to get.

because this is always the case, when you're dealing with state bodies, you're looking for a response from the HSE and they usually give you a no comment.

In this case, they expressed their condolences to the family of Mr. Costigan and said that it was too early to comment further because they were trying to establish the facts of what happened.

And sometimes people have been really unlucky.

I talk about the HSE hack that folks might remember from... 2021.

Yeah, in the middle of COVID.

Unlucky break, right? You have all these vulnerabilities.

Just remind us

exactly how that happened.

So that was, um, PwC released a report afterwards where they, they, um, got under the hood, went in and audited the HSE.

And what they found was there were 30,000, uh, workstations running windows seven, which was end of life and not supported.

That's fieldmaps.ie.

Now, new figures from the HSE show more than 70,000 people did not wait or left before completing their treatment in emergency departments during the first seven months of this year.

Chairperson of the Oireachtas Committee on Health, Social Democrats, TD Padraig Rice, obtained the figures and he joins me now.

About 10,000 a month is a huge amount, Padraig, but do we know...

Why? Like how much is this people getting fed up of waiting? How much is it that people have been maybe seen initially and don't think anyone's going to follow up with them and just walk out? Do we have any more of that granular detail?

Unfortunately not.

The detail the HSE gave to us was just the absolute numbers.

So there could be a myriad of reasons there.

So you pay 350.

And is that standard for HSE staff across the country? Or is it just where you're working?

I don't know.

I think that I can only answer for where I am.

heard

the Minister talking about that all right.

The HSE maintain that the revenue from the hospital car park is used for a range of different things, including the maintenance and upgrading of parking facilities, repayment of loans associated with upgrades, investment in site security where relevant, and support for the overall hospital budget.

Like, there was €17.8 million... generated by charging you and patients and family members the luxury of parking in hospitals across the country.