Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. We both know St. James's and nearly every other hospital are different. The work going on at St. James's per patient is highly complex and really expensive in all the ways we know. The right comparison would be activity-based costing. I am more than happy to discuss with the Deputy how much Letterkenny hospital is getting for the procedures it performs and the service it provides. Is it being short-changed, for example, and is it getting less money for a given procedure? That would be a concern and it should not be the case. Rather than comparing Letterkenny with highly specialised centres like St. James's, we could look at the volume of known procedures, and if there is a discrepancy, I would be more than happy to take a look with the Deputy. That is definitely something we could look at rectifying.

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