Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree 100% with the comments made by Senator Paul Daly. He passionately explained the crisis that faces tillage farmers across the country. The crisis is not just confined to that sector. The common denominator across all of the farming sectors is price, an raise raised whether talking to farmers at the National Ploughing Championships or, as I have done in the past week, in Donegal. Price is the issue in all sectors. I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine back here. He was here for farm safety week but we had a limited debate. We need to debate the issue of price and what the Government's strategy is to address and protect the interests of farmers.

The second issue is the health service. Senator Colm Burke talked about surveys and staff. I agree with him that when people get into the health service and into hospitals, their experience is positive. We have fantastic front-line staff across the State. The difficulty is getting into hospital and on to waiting lists and the chronic underinvestment in health services for a long time. If we are serious about this, that means investment and looking at primary health services and hospitals across the State.

There is a real problem with the way hospitals are funded. Let us look at funding for Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and the Letterkenny University Hospital. The fairest way is to base funding on the number of inpatients. My local hospital is Letterkenny University Hospital and it is the sixth largest hospital in the State. However, the financial allocations to such hospitals can be two to three times more in favour of Dublin hospitals. I appreciate there are specialties available at Dublin hospitals and, therefore, they should receive more funding but they receive far too much. I ask the Leader to convey my point to the Minister for Health and ask him to consider the funding model used for hospitals. It discriminates against hospitals in the regions and, therefore, needs to be addressed.