THE number of scans taking place in hospitals here at the weekend is so low that the average rate was recorded as 0% last year, a damning internal HSE report reveals.

Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has now ordered consultants to fix their rosters after the report showed barely any hospital scans were carried out on Saturdays.

The report comes as the Minister has also confirmed that the number of doctors rostering themselves for weekend shifts is ‘woefully low’ and she has given them a four-week deadline to address this. Under the new public-only consultant contract (POCC), doctors are required to be available to work every weekday and on Saturdays, on a rotating roster which they set for themselves.

This year is the first year where the POCC has come into full effect but elements of the agreement, including weekend rostering requirements, were launched from April of last year.

However, a recently leaked HSE audit, conducted earlier this year, of weekend productivity rates between January and August in 2025 found there was a lack of enforcement for weekend shifts.

Speaking at the Dáil Health Committee yesterday, Ms Carroll MacNeill noted the recent audit and said the total figures, which she has been presented with, from last year are worse.

She said: ‘We spent all year doing regional forms to investigate how the [POCC] is being implemented, and it’s not just disappointing figures by the end of August.

‘My figures, which haven’t been published, show now that the [rostering] system has been stood up, and work plans uploaded to it, the level of evening and weekend work is woefully low.’

The minister said she does not want to hear doctors claim that weekend shifts interrupt their working week as an excuse for non-compliance, adding: ‘Everybody in this room is able to count.’

She added: ‘The tacit non-implementation [of the POCC] may not be an offence to the contract, as such, but the non-implementation of it, in my view, is an offence to the taxpayer, who is paying for it. If I had signed a contract in 2023 with a specific salary and specific hours and, in the following three years, never been asked to work those hours, I would’ve [raised questions].’

The Mail has obtained the HSE’s internal end-of-year productivity data which was shared in a damning report given to the Minister for Health at the beginning of this year.

At the time the data was collected, the new rostering system for doctors was being rolled out across all hospitals, but very few weekend shifts were recorded by staff.

According to the documents, released to the Mail through Freedom of Information laws, the number of scans completed on Saturdays by all doctors was so negligible, that it represented 0% of the total work.

Isolated figures to account for POCC doctors only, who are contractually obliged to work on Saturdays, found that just over 11% of scans were completed at the weekend last year.

At the time, 69.5% of doctors working in public hospitals had signed the POCC, which was agreed in 2023. Some doctors on older HSE contracts are not required to sign up to the new public-only model.

Three sites – St Vincent’s Hospital in Co. Dublin, Cork University Hospital, and Galway University Hospital – are excluded from the datasheet, the records note.

On a regional basis, weekend and evening rostering rates among doctors appear to show that very few doctors were making themselves available for Saturday shifts.

One example, included in the report, details that hospitals in the Dublin and Southeast region had 112 doctors rostered for clinics between Monday and Friday evenings, but none were available on Saturdays. Just over a dozen consultants in the region were rostered to complete ‘ward rounds’ – where doctors visit inpatients staying at the site overnight – while two others were in theatre or conducting diagnostics, respectively.

A further 11 doctors in the Dublin Southeast region were carrying out ‘other clinical activity’ during their weekend shifts, the records state. None were rostered to conduct outpatient clinics, which are not held on Sundays.

A spokesman for the Department of Health told the Mail: ‘Since this progress report was issued, more consultants have been rostered for evening and Saturday work, but the current levels remain too low and need to improve further.’

He detailed that current rostering figures show just 11% of consultants work on Saturday.

While there have been slight improvements to weekend rostering since the POCC came into full effect in January, the Health Minister has hit consultants with a new deadline.

Within the next four weeks, doctors on POCC contracts must complete their rosters until the end of this year, notifying the HSE when they can work and what Saturdays they are available.

Some doctors claim that support and administrative staff are not being made available to them at the weekend to conduct clinics effectively, despite nursing unions agreeing to a new deal.

Ms Carroll MacNeill said: ‘Unions have said, explicitly, they will be there to support the implementation of the POCC, which must be stood up, managed, led, and organised by clinicians.’

A Government source told the Mail last night that rosters are considered a ‘normal part of working life’ and that there should not be an exception for the health service. ‘The minister is asking for visibility into the future,’ they said. ‘It allows the HSE to ensure that the services around and that are needed on those days are there as well.’

Ms Carroll MacNeill detailed yesterday that, on some occasions, theatres and clinics are appearing to close early in the day, which limits the number of patients that can be seen.

The Mail understands that concerns have been raised over at least one hospital in Leinster as its reports, handed over to the HSE at the beginning of the year, appeared to show staff leaving early.

In some cases, the clinics were only open for periods of as little as four hours each day, between 10am and 2pm. Under the POCC, all staff are obligated to work until at least 10pm.

Discussions have been held within Government over whether it is viable to invest in new equipment or expanding services at these sites when productivity is so low, the Mail understands. Questions have been raised whether new replacement schemes for old equipment will result in a loss for the State if clinics are appearing to close early.

Ms Carroll MacNeill said: ‘A baseline analysis which looked at every outpatient clinic in all 41 hospitals showed us room vacancy rates, and how it changes over time. At one Level Four hospital in the southwest we saw that the room vacancy rate during the week was between 4-9%, but it was 24% on Friday afternoons.

‘That is not a hospital that needs more rooms, that is a hospital that needs to use the rooms on a Friday afternoon. And I haven’t even seen the figures for Tuesday nights, at 9pm. I’ve been in this hospital on Tuesday night, at 9pm, and I can tell you it wasn’t as busy as it was at 9am. They are not using the rooms.’

Estimates seen by the Mail suggest that if POCC doctors worked up to an hour more per day, waiting lists would dramatically fall.

A toolkit to assist hospitals with improving rosters has led to an additional 4,000 new appointments being added at Naas General Hospital in Co. Kildare.

The Department of Health and the HSE were approached for comment.