Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will raise the issue of overcrowding. Last month, 8,000 sick and injured people were left without a bed, an increase on the previous year. Scandalously, 30 of them were children. Letterkenny University Hospital is top of the list in terms of the number of patients on trolleys and in wards. This morning as we speak there are 27 people on trolleys in that hospital. Every day last year there were on average 19 people on trolleys in that hospital. What is scandalous is that there is a ward with 19 beds lying empty because the Government will not provide the necessary resources which the hospital management asked for one and a half years ago and instead we have patients lying on trolleys as a result. Senator Pádraig Mac Lochlainn and I have launched a campaign. There has been a huge response with thousands of people signing a petition demanding action be taken and that we give dignity to all people instead of having them lying on trolleys and that we open the ward that has 19 beds. I have raised this time and time again. Will the Government make the necessary resources available to open the ward, which has been lying empty year after year, and to take patients out of the corridors and have them treated in the ward?

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