IF INNOVATION AND new technology is embraced, Ireland has the potential to have one of the best health services in the world, former Health Minister Stephen Donnelly claimed today.

While acknowledging there continued to be immense challenges, he said that the HSE is not failing and “is improving rapidly”, while speaking at the MacGill Summer School in the Glenties in Co Donegal today. 

But he said “the level of negativity we see [in Ireland] is not normal”.

It is this focus on negativity that is holding risk-taking and innovation back in the health service, Donnelly said. 

“If we’re going to adapt and innovate and do new things, we have to take risks.”

Donnelly said that when he was Minister for Health and he said this to civil servants or people in the HSE, that they would say that “the game is set”.

He said that they would say: “If we do anything well, there will be no acknowledgement, there will be no reward. There will be no recognition ever for anything good we do. The second we make a mistake, we’ll be all over social media, we’ll be dragged in front of Oireachtas and we’ll be in for it.”

Because of that, he said, they told him: “We’re not going to take risks, we’re not going to innovate.”

The focus on negativity, has a “constraining effect on the people who we need to innovate and take risks on our behalf”, he continued. 

Get comfortable with getting AI’s health advice

Donnelly was speaking as part of a panel on taboo ideas to transform Ireland. 

In addition to “Ireland being a great country” with a very negative attitude, Donnelly’s second ‘taboo’ idea was that “we all need to start getting comfortable with getting medical advice from an algorithm”.

And that “most of us would have to be comfortable sharing our data… down to the genetic level, anonymised, but still sharing”.

If the health service adopts this new technology, he said:

“We could be one of a handful of countries in the world that does something truly mind blowing and extraordinary, and flips our entire concept of a public health service.”

He said that “AI is coming to help clinicians” and used the example of a potential AI tool listening to a conversation between a patient and a GP, picking up on what was said, and what was potentially missed by the doctor. 

But he added: “There has to be accountability… there has to be transparency, there has to be security of data.” 

Legislation may be needed for this, he said, referencing “very clever people” working at EU and member-state level on principles for AI within healthcare. 

“I’d be surprised that healthcare doesn’t look quite different in 10 years from now.”

Donnelly was part of a panel hosted by design historian Jess Majekodunmi. Both here with event director Vincent McCarthy. Johnny Bambury 2025 Johnny Bambury 2025

Social media should be regulated

Donnelly also called on social media companies to be regulated like media organisations.

“Social media has just gone completely off the reservation.

“When I went into politics, actually, it was fairly benign. People use it to provide their ideas and have chats.

“Now it’s just poison, its lies and misinformation and hatred and racism and poison, but it’s been consumed all the time.”

Calling for its greater regulation he said that “mainstream media… would be shut down in a day if they if they engaged in all the social media platforms do”.

The panel which included Donnelly was criticised by audience member Maria Sweeney, a “very proud Donegal person”, who said “we are completely forgotten by Dublin”. She was not the only person who made a comment about the talk being “Dublin-centric”.

She cited people having to travel from Malin Head or Bloody Foreland for healthcare in Dublin or Galway.

“I don’t know if they know we’re here at all.”